Conspiracy Theories

Name: Anish Choudhury

What are the basics of recommendation algorithims?

Recommendation Algorithims take data from the user's current interests and gives the user recommendations based on what the user has been interested in. For example, say you have been researching what the best headphones are. The website collects data on what you've been researching and starts giving you ads about headphones. This has nothing to do with the company "listening to what you've been saying" and more to do with what you've been searching up/interested in.

What is the feedback loop?

This takes the basic of recommendation algorithims to the next level. For example, as the code learns more and more about what you're interested in, it will feed you more results with extremities/biases. For example, say that you're interested in the Ukraine vs Russia war. If you research more about it, the algorithim will give you results that could be biased towards Ukraine or Russia. The feedback loop could also be called as "the filter bubble" or the "echo chamber effect."

Conspiracy Theories and Algorithmic Amplification

Sites often prioritize money over factual information. Since conspiracy theories often engage humans by their nature, this results in more ads, watchtime, revenue, etc.. Sites exploit human kind's nature of curiousity in this way. It is important to know the facts and have trust in a government who hasn't lost our trust. Just like google, sites often collect data to know what interests you. This can lead to a feedback loop where the site continues to fool the human mind and keeps feeding more misinformation for more and more revenue. The sad part about reality is that it works very well and leads to a very uneducated group of people who have an active political say in our government.

Platform Incentives

Platform Incentives are really just algorithmic amplification but purposeful spread of misinformation. For example, some people who call the earth flat, really just want to spread their misinformation for ad revenue and likes. People will also create misinformation (conspiracy theories) just to get this attention.

Potential for Exploitation

People with malicious intent that know the algorithim for spreading information like to exploit it by purposely feeding it conspiracy theories. The malicious people know about the algorithim's preference for highly-engaging content and purposely do this to get platform incentives. It is important for us to use our own logic and find holes in conspiracy theories because if we don't, we will become uneducated. For example, a flat earth directly contradicts with gravity and physics which doesn't make any sense. Science is a tool that we created which we have proved time and time again to be true. Conspiracy theories cannot be proved unless it's a coincidence where science can.