Opinion | The TikTokification of Social Media May Finally Be Its Undoing - The New York Times

According to Mark Zuckerberg, "Consumers no longer control their social-media feeds. Meta’s algorithm... is showing users “a lot of stuff” not posted by people they had connected with... future feeds [will] show you “content that’s generated by an A.I. system.”"

Fortunately, "Our legal system is starting to recognize this shift and hold tech giants responsible for the effects of their algorithms".

The article then lays out the legal baclstory:

• Section 230, which "initially intended to protect tech companies from defamation claims related to posts made by users... made sense in the early days... when we largely chose the content we saw"
• the platforms "continued to argue, successfully, that they were not responsible for the content shared on their platforms", despite the way their algorithms were optimised for enragement, promoting and thus encouraging divisive, dangerous content - "Section 230 now has been used to shield tech from consequences for facilitating deadly drug sales, sexual harassment, illegal arms sales and human trafficking"
• "Then came TikTok", purely algorithmically based, "often pushing to the sidelines the posts of accounts we had actually chosen to follow"
• So now that "tech platforms are actively shaping our experiences... maybe they should be held liable for creating experiences that damage our bodies, our children, our communities and our democracy."

Which is what's now happening - eg an August ruling "that TikTok was not immune to a legal challenge regarding its algorithm", which placed a “blackout challenge" video on a 10yr old's feed. She killed herself trying to follow the challenge. The judge has ruled that "Placing the video “was TikTok’s own ‘expressive activity,’ and thus its first-party speech”.

This is "likely to end up at the Supreme Court". Consequences could include forcing companies to "ensure they are not algorithmically promoting harmful or discriminatory products", but also giving them "a greater incentive to censor speech" - although Twitter does that already.

Ideally, this will be a win-win: "create incentives to build platforms that give control back to users... We get to decide what we see, and they get to limit their liability" - ie, #AI4Communities.

The author, like me, has moved primarily to Bluesky as it "allows me to manage my content moderation settings" and gives her a wide array of feeds to choose from. It's more work, but "It requires us to be intentional about what we are looking for".