Social Media Without Algorithms? One Group Pushing to Give Consumers Options

Facebook is being accused of a lot of bad stuff these days/ The company now known as Meta has a litany of public issues, chief among them being the former namesake platform’s tendency to push content that is somewhat questionable.

Whether it is pro-anorexia videos to young teenagers or scientific misinformation, there are quite a few examples out there of the “algorithm” gone wrong (and we’ve reported on more than a few of them right here).

Well, one group of US lawmakers think they have the perfect solution to this problem: Simply offer an algorithm-free version of the social media platform in question.

Whether that’s possible or not, not to mention how much it would change the experience, is not really part of this on-the-face simple solution. The Filter Bubble Transparency Act would apparently expand consumer options.

According to Axios, Senator David Cicilline of Rhode Island said of the proposed legislation:

“Facebook and other dominant platforms manipulate their users through opaque algorithms that prioritize growth and profit over everything else. And due to these platforms’ monopoly power and dominance, users are stuck with few alternatives to this exploitative business model, whether it is in their social media feed, on paid advertisements, or in their search results.”

Of course, this is still in the proposal stages and who knows how far it will make it from here. Axios also cites threats by lawmakers to remove Facebook’s content liability protections for its newsfeed feature if algorithms were being used to serve up harmful content.

Do you think a social media platform like Facebook without an algorithm serving up content is a good idea? Let us know what you think of the Filter Bubble Transparency Act in the comments below.

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[Axios]