Social media platforms have been implicated in conflicts of all scales, from urban gun violence to the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6 and civil war in South Sudan. Scientifically, it is difficult to tell how much social media can be blamed for one-off incidents.
But in much the way that climate change increases the risk of extreme weather, evidence suggests that current algorithms (which mostly optimise for engagement) raise the political “temperature” by disproportionately surfacing inflammatory content. This may make people angrier, increasing the risk that social differences escalate to violence.
But what if we redesigned social media to bridge divides? “Bridging-based ranking” is an alternative kind of algorithm for ranking content in social media feeds that explicitly aims to build mutual understanding and trust across differing perspectives.
