Information Cascades and Fake News
There has been a lot of discussion recently on fake news and its impact on the election. People claim that phony news articles spread on social media by Russia and their allies influenced American voters and hold Facebook and Twitter accountable for not dealing with this threat to the democratic system. The article linked below talks about the role of information cascades in this process, which is the process by which people allow other’s people decisions to influence theirs.
In the Senate Hearing, the algorithms companies like Facebook use were heavily criticized, by some for not doing enough to filter fake news and hate speech, by others for censoring different opinions on people’s feed. This relates closely to information cascades, as it has been shown that people’s Facebook feed is often a reflection of their own views. For example, Republican voters will more often get Republican favored messages on their feed, often shared by people in their network. Thus, the article explains, this creates an “echo chamber”, in which other views are shielded off. Additionally, the information cascade effect makes use of this illusion that everyone agrees with your own views, by making you act the same way others do (or it appears others do).
This process, created by the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what they show on someone’s feed, has been deemed detrimental by politicians in recent times, especially after the election. It has made that the social media companies made some enemies in politics, who point at the business incentive of Facebook to refute the statement that they aim to “connect the world”. Only time will tell if we will see legislative restrictions on social media in the future, or if we will just have to get used to these kinds of manipulation by algorithms.