[Chapter-delegates] How the Internet can promote or hinder democracy, and how it can be used by authoritarian regimes

[Richard Hill]

The September/October issue of the MIT Technology Review has several good
articles on how the Internet can be used to affect political systems, see:

  https://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/2018/09/ 

In addition to the article I posted previously, I single out this one:

 
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611826/technologists-are-trying-to-fix-th
e-filter-bubble-problem-that-tech-helped-create/ 

I cite from the article:

"For Roy and a number of other researchers who study the internet's impact
on society, the most concerning problem highlighted by the 2016 election
isn't that the Russians used Twitter and Facebook to spread propaganda, or
that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica illicitly gained
access to the private information of more than 50 million Facebook users.
It's that we have all, quite voluntarily, retreated into hyperpartisan
virtual corners, owing in no small part to social media and internet
companies that determine what we see by monitoring what we have clicked on
in the past and giving us more of the same. In the process, opposing
perspectives are sifted out, and we're left with content that reinforces
what we already believe."

The article goes on to explain that it's more complicated than that.

Best,
Richard