The Article How Technology Disrupted The Truth on The Computer Algorithms

The current business model for news and media is largely based on how many people visit your site. The more people that click on a website, the more revenue is collected through advertising. This has drawn many outlets to publish articles that are not very thorough and in many cases dishonest. The tech giants, Facebook and Google, have also become major throughputs for people to consume media. The algorithms utilized by these companies are designed to give people more of what they want and believe thereby reinforcing, not challenging, preexisting ideas one may have (whether they are correct or not) and creating echo chambers along the way. The impact that this new business model is taking on journalism’s credibility and accuracy is astounding and must be corrected soon.

The article serves as a reminder just how much algorithms and code that we write as computer scientists can affect almost anything. Whenever we go to write any new piece of software or application we have to look at it from many different, nuanced perspectives. Not only do we have to carefully design it initially, but also modify and adjust it if problems arise within the system.

I find myself initially wanting to disagree with her on a few things, but Viner eventually evens out her arguments and shows the reason why certain problems exist or why they are harder to fix than one may originally think. However, I do think that she is biased towards the established media. Technology has made it easier for newer journalistic outlets to grow their audience by taking it away from the established media which is growing more and more dishonest every day. These newer sources are only able to grow their audiences through proving what is true and untrue which is the root problem.

Both the way of how people consume media and the way that outlets produce media are flawed. Outlets tend to produce more and more content regardless of validity just to get clicks while content throughputs such as Facebook constantly provide people only with the content that they want to see. Both fuel lies and separation between people and must be corrected.

I do agree with the conclusion. In order for people to establish what is true and untrue in their mind, first, the content that is published must be factually correct, and, second, people must be exposed to both sides of any argument. That is the only way the best ideas come to the top and worst problems get solved.

2 Timothy 2:15 - Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. To truly be knowledgeable of something, we must study it thoroughly to rightly distinguish between truth and fiction.