Algorithms are making political speech more extreme
Algorithms are making political speech more extreme
+ a facial recognition boom, Jack Dorsey bans mention of Jay-Z, the Moo Deng effect, and Trump's weird system for posting online revealed
Today we have a guest post from Adam Aleksic aka . Adam is a Harvard linguistics graduate and content creator who has an amazing Substack about how the internet is reshaping language. His first book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language, is available for pre-order.
Politicians are changing the way they speak for algorithmic reach
by
Whenever I post videos on TikTok or Instagram, I can’t trust the platforms to show you my content. Modern social media doesn’t allow for a direct link between creators and followers. Instead, the apps use algorithms to recommend curated content, which means that I have to modify my communicative style to fit their constraints. I talk faster, with less nuance. I hyperbolize and exaggerate my natural voice, because I know that’s what the algorithm wants.
This is a nuisance for creators but a far more serious problem for politicians, who also have to reshape their messages around social media algorithms.
The implications, needless to say, are concerning. Research is already indicating that politicians are engaging in greater online incivility than before because they know that civil content garners less engagement. Other analyses suggest that the deliberate exaggeration of online opinions causes increased polarization, normalizing extreme views while damping moderate views. Marjorie Taylor Greene is always going to get more clicks than my rank-and-file congressman, Paul Tonko.
It wasn’t always like this. Consider FDR’s “Fireside Chats” between 1933 and 1944. Across a series of radio broadcasts, the president was able to guide the American people through the Great Depression, explain his policies, and debunk misinformation.
By speaking directly over radio, FDR was able to instantly reach over 60 percent of U.S. households. This communicative style, called broadcast communication, can be represented like this:
In the broadcast model, one person can speak to a large group of people without any intermediary. Their message is unfiltered, spread just as intended—and this is how America has traditionally consumed its political information, whether that’s through radio, print media, or television.
Today, though, a majority of Americans are getting news from social media, as fewer and fewer voters rely on radios or TV. Fireside chats have been replaced with X, Facebook, and TikTok, meaning that politicians have been forced to adapt to a different style of viral communication, which looks like this:
Unlike broadcasting, viral communication initially reaches a much smaller audience. A TikTok only gets views if it generates enough algorithmic engagement to be recommended to more user feeds, and a tweet only goes viral if it gets enough retweets. Each post reaches a different audience, so politicians can’t expect their messaging to be consistent, or heard at all, unless they can make it go viral.
As such, candidates are reshaping their communication to perform better on algorithmic platforms. This means getting more likes, more shares, and more retention—which in turn means exaggerating and hyperbolizing, since less exciting content simply doesn’t go far on those platforms.
Candidates are reshaping their communication to perform better on algorithmic platforms.
Our move away from broadcast communication may also be behind America’s well-documented rise in online misinformation.
Algorithms use engagement as a metric for virality, and misinformation tends to generate more engagement. Claims about, say, Haitians eating household pets are going to elicit the extreme responses needed for virality. Even attempts to correct those falsehoods can paradoxically register as additional engagement.
Gone are the times of detail, accuracy, and nuance. Nobody wants to listen to a 30-minute address over the radio anymore. Our storytelling is trending shorter, snappier, more sound-bitey—whatever’s going to get you to hit that “share” button.
The bright side? At least our politics are getting funnier. People like zingers, gimmicks, and stunts, so those do better in the algorithm than boring speeches. Politicians communicate through memes, whether that’s Kamala becoming “Brat” for a summer or Donald Trump appearing on the Logan Paul podcast.
Just look at Senator Fatima Payman’s recent speech in front of the Australian Parliament, which received tens of millions of views across social media platforms.
“Sigmas of Australia,” she begins. “I say that this goofy ahh government have been capping.” Payman goes on to deliver an entire speech in “brainrot language” before urging voters to elect a government with “more aura.”
Payman knew that her meme speech would go viral and amplify her cause. She wouldn’t have had any reason to speak like this if she could directly broadcast her speech to Australians, but because of the different medium she instead leant into the joke for shares and engagement.
This is just the start. All political campaigning is going to be meme-based in the future, because algorithms are only going to tighten their grip over our society.
Everything you’ve seen in recent elections—the jokes, the extremism, the misinformation—is here to stay, all because we switched from one style of communication to another.
How governments use facial recognition technology to crack down on protesters
From the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter to the Umbrella Revolution, large scale protests have shaken governments around the world. But over the past decade, facial recognition technology has made speaking out significantly more risky. Demonstrators can be picked out of a crowd, arrested, and even preemptively detained.
Rest of the World published a fantastic deep dive on how facial recognition technology is being used to suppress freedom of speech around the world. From Rest of World:
Over the past decade, there has been a steep rise globally in law enforcement using facial recognition technology. Data gathered by Steven Feldstein, a researcher with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, found that government agencies in 78 countries now use public facial recognition systems.
The public is often supportive of the use of such tech: 59% of U.K. adults told a survey they “somewhat” or “strongly” support police use of facial recognition technology in public spaces, and a Pew Research study found 46% of U.S. adults said they thought it was a good idea for society. In China, one study found that 51% of respondents approved of facial recognition tech in the public sphere, while in India, 69% of people said in a 2023 report that they supported its use by the police.
But while authorities generally pitch facial recognition as a tool to capture terrorists or wanted murderers, the technology has also emerged as a critical instrument in a very particular context: punishing protesters.
… In countries where demonstrating can come with physical or political risk, large-scale protests have historically offered a degree of anonymity, and, with it, a level of protection. Mass protests are a way for citizens to express dissent as a collective — often under the assumption that “they can’t arrest us all.”
But in the last decade, the spread of facial recognition technology has changed that equation: A lone face in a crowd is no longer anonymous; facial recognition allows authorities to capture people’s identities en masse.
It’s no coincidence that the widespread adoption of the technology has evolved in parallel with increasingly draconian laws against protest. As part of its “Protect the Protest” project, Amnesty International tracks repressive legislation that imposes illegitimate restrictions on protests, with examples across five regions. Facial recognition tech helps enable this repression by offering a way to enforce such regulation on a sweeping scale.
What I’m reading
The Rise of the Online Villains
Twitter becomes real life as the posters we all love to hate head to the White House. - The Idiot Box
The TikTok electorate
Max Read on the influencers-as-an-inherently-conservative-demographic and how social media turned everyone into small-business owners, is a must read. - Read Max
How America Embraced Gender War
Both Trump’s and Harris’s campaigns framed the Presidential election as a contest between men and women. Did the results prove them right? - New Yorker
The Rage of the Incels
Incels aren’t really looking for sex. They’re looking for absolute male supremacy. - New Yorker
The Untold Story Of Andrew Tate, The Internet’s Most Notorious Influencer
Tate, who stands accused of human trafficking, comes from a family of violent, competitive men and high-achieving women. Those who knew him in his younger years are asking, “What happened to Andrew?” - BuzzFeed News
More fun stuff
The Moo Deng effect? Thailand named ‘destination of the year’ by top travel experts.
Elwood Edwards, the voice of AOL's 'You've Got Mail," has died.
A perfect performance of the OK Go treadmill video.
Beverly Hills High School had to ban jumping and shouting after students became too crazy and excited after Trump’s win.
Employees at Jack Dorsey’s payment company Block are banned from discussing Jay-Z.
A Tinder for couples who can’t decide what to eat.
I loved this photography series exploring what people might be wearing below their passport photos.
Black people are receiving racist text messages about picking cotton 'at the nearest plantation'.
Live Nation is launching Side Hustles, a series giving a behind the scenes look into how celebrity founders run their brands.
A Paul Mescal lookalike contest took place in Dublin.
Every single crypto industry-backed candidate won their race this election.
Katie Notopolous spoke to the company that makes the $45 Skidibi Toilet "mystery toilet" toy.
YouTube Streamer "Norme" is attempting to stay in solitary confinement for a full month with no light. It’s been three weeks and he seems to be losing it.
This behind the scenes video of Trump shows how he posts on social media simply by dictating to a young aid who types his posts out in all caps and hits send.
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And if you go one more layer down, it's all about the economic engine, advertising, that underlies the modern social media algorithm. These services need to keep you scrolling because that increases your time engaged, increases the ads they can show you, which increases your value to them. So the revenue incentive is linked directly to the propagation of misinformation. Great business model, really bad for society!
I’ve been involved in similar situations to the one at Block before, where employees believe they can protest inside the company to force leadership to take action on something, only to find out that in corporate terms that’s creating a hostile work environment and spreading negative morale throughout the company on purpose, which is a fireable offense to the CEO and HR. As a sometimes-activist employee, Jack’s “put up or shut up” pisses me right off. But in his shoes, who can blame him? There are undoubtedly people at Block who do not care about this issue, and no one to speak for them without being lambasted by the others. No one is going to put it to a vote, if such a thing was ever done, it would creates more team-wide morale issues. A company is a team, some types of dissent only tear it apart.