Tech Created Our Toxic Political Landscape, and Only Tech Can Fix It
With Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied in most polling averages, you donât need me to tell you that America is divided more than it has been since 1861. A UC Davis study last year found that a significant portion of Americans think violence for political objectives can be justified. For the first time in history, there were no fewer than two assassination attempts, and potentially a third, against a presidential candidate, one of which came within an inch of killing Trump.
This is also the first time in history that weâve had to take such extreme measures to protect polls and poll workers. According to NBC News, election officials have been threatened, harassed, and targeted simply for doing their jobs. Incidents such as suspected arson attacks on ballot drop boxes and threats against election officials are happening across the country. In Maricopa County, Arizona (one of the hotbeds of conspiracy theories), officials have turned the countyâs voting tabulation center into a war zone, with snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, swarms of drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights in case of potential attacks. In other states, schools are closed on Election Day so police officers can patrol polling sites.
No matter who wins, Americans will wake up the morning after the election in a deeply divided nation. But while pundits and political operatives will rush to dissect voting patterns and campaign strategies, theyâll be missing the real story: Americaâs social fabric wasnât torn apart by politicians (though they certainly helped)âit was algorithmically optimized into oblivion. The only way to fix America is to fix the algorithms that broke it.
Algorithmsâthe sophisticated programs that determine, among other things, what pieces of content individual users see in their feedâhave fundamentally transformed the way we consume news and information. They donât care if the content is false or divisive or downright destructive. They simply surface the content thatâs most âengagingââand the fact is we are more likely to react to content that provokes a strong emotional response. As a result, our attention is directed to the most polarizing and abrasive videos and posts and other bite-size nuggets that elicit anger, keeping us in a constant cycle of outrage that feeds the platformsâ need for profit.
These algorithmic curators donât just predict our interests; they shape them. Theyâve transformed us into a nation of people living in parallel but fundamentally different realities. Take any major issue facing the world today: immigration, gun control, foreign policy, Israel, climate change, or abortion. The social media universe you inhabit doesnât just influence your position on these issuesâit determines which facts youâll see, which experts youâll hear, and which arguments youâll encounter. The result is that Americans arenât just disagreeing anymore; weâre operating from entirely different sets of premises, facts, and beliefs.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 4 in 10 young Americans say they âregularlyâ use TikTok to get their news. According to the report, other platforms include Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and X. And research published in the journal Science found that emotionally charged content seems to spread more rapidly on these platforms.
When you dig into TikTokâs algorithms, itâs truly terrifying how manipulative they can beâsure, sometimes itâs just to show you fun dance videos or funny memes, but itâs also to share misinformation about some of the most difficult issues confronting the planet. As a result, we amplify made-up stuff more than the truth. A 2016â2018 study by the MIT Media Lab found that false news stories are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories. Now that AI has become part of the misinformation news cycle, itâs only going to get worse.
The path forward to fix all of this isnât complicated. In fact, itâs incredibly simple. Tech companies need to fundamentally reimagine their algorithmsâ role in our democracy. Instead of optimizing for engagement at any cost, they need to start optimizing for something far more valuable: informed citizenship. This means redesigning their algorithms to promote factual content and show people information that doesnât align with their existing beliefs. It means introducing friction into the sharing of unverified information. And yes, it means potentially sacrificing some of those precious engagement metrics that have made social media executives into some of the most powerful people on the planet.
As we emerge from another bitter election, we face a choice: continue down this path of algorithmic division, where Americans increasingly live in separate realities, or demand that tech companies accept their role as stewards of our national dialogue. The technology that divided us can be redesigned with a few lines of code to bring us back together (or at least a little bit closer together). Itâs clear that someone like Elon Musk has no interest in that, but others, like Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, and Neal Mohan of YouTube, might. Because, while we may disagree on policies and politicians, surely we can agree on this: A democracy cannot function when its citizens no longer share a basic understanding of reality.
