By:
February 26, 2018
Major tech companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly under scrutiny for their role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 election. Facebook and Google recently admitted that Kremlin-linked agents bought thousands of dollars worth of targeted ads to provoke social tensions and distort reality during the campaign. The episode is just one in a series of complaints that social media has worked to silo information and sow division — with some even claiming that its business model and algorithms threaten democracy itself. “The monetization and manipulation of information is swiftly tearing us apart,” Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, recently wrote in The Washington Post. • Do you believe that social media is tearing society apart? Do tech companies have a responsibility to protect consumers from misinformation?