'Tocqueville's interest in American institutions reflected more than mere curiosity: In his native France, a revolution launched with similarly high ideals about equality and democracy had ended badly. His parents had nearly been guillotined during the wave of violence that followed the momentous events of 1789. By contrast, American democracy worked—and he wanted to understand why.
[...] Americans were good at democracy because they
practiced democracy. They formed what he called "associations," the myriad organizations that we now call "civil society," and they did so everywhere:
Not only do [Americans] have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools … Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.
Tocqueville reckoned that the true success of democracy in America rested [...] in these habits and practices. In France, philosophes in grand salons discussed abstract principles of democracy, yet ordinary Frenchmen had no special links to one another. By contrast, Americans worked together: "As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce in the world, they seek each other out; and when they have found each other, they unite."
In the nearly two centuries that have passed since Tocqueville wrote these words, many of those institutions and habits have deteriorated or disappeared. Most Americans no longer have much experience of "township" democracy. Some no longer have much experience of associations, in the Tocquevillian sense, either. Twenty-five years ago, the political scientist Robert Putnam was already describing the decline of what he called "social capital" in the U.S.: the disappearance of clubs and committees, community and solidarity. [...]
With the wholesale transfer of so much entertainment, social interaction, education, commerce, and politics from the real world to the virtual world—a process recently accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic—many Americans have come to live in a nightmarish inversion of the Tocquevillian dream, a new sort of wilderness. [...] Instead of participating in civic organizations that give them a sense of community as well as practical experience in tolerance and consensus-building, Americans join internet mobs, in which they are submerged in the logic of the crowd, clicking Like or Share and then moving on. Instead of entering a real-life public square, they drift anonymously into digital spaces where they rarely meet opponents; when they do, it is only to vilify them.
Conversation in this new American public sphere is governed not by established customs and traditions in service of democracy but by rules set by a few for-profit companies in service of their needs and revenues. Instead of the procedural regulations that guide a real-life town meeting, conversation is ruled by algorithms that are designed to capture attention, harvest data, and sell advertising. The voices of the angriest, most emotional, most divisive—and often the most duplicitous—participants are amplified. Reasonable, rational, and nuanced voices are much harder to hear; radicalization spreads quickly. [...]
In this new wilderness, democracy is becoming impossible. If one half of the country can't hear the other, then Americans can no longer have shared institutions, apolitical courts, a professional civil service, or a bipartisan foreign policy. We can't compromise. We can't make collective decisions—we can't even agree on what we're deciding. No wonder millions of Americans refuse to accept the results of the most recent presidential election, despite the verdicts of state electoral committees, elected Republican officials, courts, and Congress. We no longer are the America Tocqueville admired, but have become the enfeebled democracy he feared[...]
[...] We don't have an internet based on our democratic values of openness, accountability, and respect for human rights. An online system controlled by a tiny number of secretive companies in Silicon Valley is not democratic but rather oligopolistic, even oligarchic.
[...] Even as our polity deteriorates, an internet that promotes democratic values instead of destroying them—that makes conversation better instead of worse—lies within our grasp. [...]
[...] Facebook keeps careful tabs on the toxicity of American discourse. Long before the election, the company, which conducts frequent, secret tests on its News Feed algorithm, had begun to play with different ways to promote more reliable information. Among other things, it created a new ranking system, designed to demote spurious, hyper-partisan sources and to boost "authoritative news content." Shortly after Election Day, the ranking system was given greater weight in the platform's algorithm, resulting in a purportedly "nicer News Feed"—one more grounded in reality. The change was part of a series of "break-glass measures" that the company announced would be put in place in periods of "heightened tension." Then, a few weeks later, it was undone. After the Capitol insurrection, on January 6, the change was restored, in advance of Joe Biden's inauguration. A Facebook spokesperson would not explain to us exactly when or why the company made those decisions, how it defines "heightened tension," or how many of the other "break-glass measures" are still in place. Its published description of the ranking system does not explain how its metrics for reliable news are weighted, and of course there is no outside oversight of the Facebook employees who are making decisions about them. Nor will Facebook reveal anything about the impact of this change. [...]
Facebook can make its site "nicer," not just after an election but all the time. It can do more to encourage civil conversation, discourage disinformation, and reveal its own thinking about these things. But it doesn't, because Facebook's interests are not necessarily the same as the interests of the American public, or any democratic public. Although the company does have policies designed to fight disinformation, and although it has been willing to make adjustments to improve discourse, it is a for-profit organization that wants users to stay on Facebook as long as possible and keep coming back. Sometimes that goal may lead the company in a "nicer" direction, but not always, especially if users stay on the site to connect to fellow extremists, or to hear their prejudices reinforced. [...] "News feeds on Facebook or Twitter operate on a business model of commodifying the attention of billions of people per day," [...] "They have led to narrower and crazier views of the world."
[...] the current design of the internet makes it easier than ever to target vulnerable audiences with propaganda, and gives conspiracy thinking more prominence.
[...] We know alternatives are possible, because we used to have them. Before private commercial platforms definitively took over, online public-interest projects briefly flourished. Some of the fruits of that moment live on. [...]
All of that began to change with the mass-market arrival of smartphones and a shift in the tactics of the major platforms. [...] a model that was controlled, top-down, and homogeneous. [...] As a few companies came to control the market, they used their monopoly power to undermine competitors, track users across the internet, collect massive troves of data, and dominate advertising.
It's a grim story, and yet not entirely unfamiliar. Americans should recognize it from their own history. [...] By the end of the 19th century, the country seemed condemned to monopoly capitalism, financial crisis, deep inequality, a loss of trust in institutions, and political violence. fter the 25th president, William McKinley, was murdered by an anarchist, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt[...] broke up monopolies to make the economy more fair, returning power to small businesses and entrepreneurs. He enacted protections for working people. And he created the national parks, public spaces for all to enjoy.
In this sense, the internet has taken us back to the 1890s: Once again, we have a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful people whose obligations are to themselves, and perhaps to their shareholders, but not to the greater good. But Americans didn't accept this reality in the 1890s, and we don't need to accept it now. We are a democracy; we can change the rules again. [...] We must alter the design and structure of online spaces so that citizens, businesses, and political actors have better incentives, more choices, and more rights.'
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This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 10 March 2021 - 06:02 AM
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Aptorian, on 05 March 2021 - 06:15 PM, said:
