(2021-02-02) Roose How The Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis

Kevin Roose: How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis. Hoaxes, lies and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be.

I called a number of experts and asked what the Joe Biden administration could do to help fix our truth-challenged information ecosystem, or at least prevent it from getting worse

Assess the damage, and avoid the ‘terrorist’ trap.

These experts were heartened that the Biden administration had already announced a “comprehensive threat assessment” of domestic extremism after the Capitol riots (2021 Storming of the US Capitol). But they cautioned that categorizing these extremists as “domestic terrorists” — while understandable, given the damage they’ve caused — could backfire. They noted that counterterrorism efforts had historically been used to justify expanding state power in ways that end up harming religious and ethnic minorities, and that today’s domestic extremism crisis didn’t map neatly onto older, more conventional types of terror threats.

using new and narrower labels that could help distinguish between different types of movements, and different levels of influence within those movements

Appoint a ‘reality czar.’

Right now, these experts said, the federal government’s response to disinformation and domestic extremism is haphazard and spread across multiple agencies, and there’s a lot of unnecessary overlap.

This task force could also meet regularly with tech platforms, and push for structural changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation problems. (For example, it could formulate “safe harbor” exemptions that would allow platforms to share data about QAnon and other conspiracy theory communities with researchers and government agencies without running afoul of privacy laws.)

Audit the algorithms (algorithmic feed)

that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other major platforms use to rank feeds, recommend content and usher users into private groups, many of which have been responsible for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremist views

One bill introduced last year by two House Democrats, Representatives Anna G. Eshoo of California and Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, could help contain some of the damage. The Protecting Americans From Dangerous Algorithms Act would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove large tech platforms’ legal immunity for violent or violence-inciting content that their feed-ranking and recommendation systems amplified

Last year, under the threat of a forced breakup, TikTok pledged to allow experts to examine its algorithm to prove it wasn’t maliciously manipulating American users

you might not even need legislation

Enact a ‘social stimulus,’ and fix people’s problems. (Economic Transition)

many people are drawn to extremist groups like the Proud Boys and conspiracy theories like QAnon not because they’re convinced by the facts, but because the beliefs give them a sense of community or purpose, or fills a void in their lives.

if President Biden wants to bring extremists and conspiracy theorists back to reality, he can start by making that reality worth coming back to.