All users internet and social networks have experienced this: when an Internet user views content, the digital platform immediately recommends one or more other content “likely to interest him”. This is the result of the work of algorithms, which, on the basis of our past “clicks”, our geolocation, our personal characteristics, identify messages, information, videos likely to extend our stay on the web or on social networks. In fact, the longer we stay on these digital platforms, the greater the mass of advertising messages we will receive and the greater the mass of personal data that we reveal.
These recommendations are sometimes useful: they direct us to books or pieces of music that we did not know and that we will enjoy discovering. If we are interested in reliable, demanding and nuanced information, we will be guided to other reliable, demanding and nuanced content. But if we start to get interested in fanciful, crass and Manichean news, we will be oriented to rumors and gossip, supposed conspiracies and the most delusional information. This is how, for example, the theory of the flatness of the earth has made a big comeback with a significant proportion of Internet users, despite all the scientific evidence.
A bad guide
In the same vein, the movement of yellow vests was amplified by the viewing of content claiming to reveal a “truth that is hidden from us in the official media”. Fragile minds are then likely to fall into paranoia or hysteria, in the conviction that the world has joined forces against them, that there is a plot that must absolutely be thwarted. Each new content recommended to these Internet users who have become receptive to these messages “not coming from the official doxa” reinforces their conviction that it is legitimate to overturn the established order, that journalists and politicians are “all rotten”, …
The recommendation algorithms encourage all forms of radicalization: rather than directing us towards contrary opinions which would help us to weigh the pros and cons, to qualify our first assessment, they reinforce our most extreme visions, precipitate us towards excess, accentuate our resentment. They are a bad guide. They exclude weighting and reinforce the propensity for anger to explode or violence to unleash. Needless to say, recent events have illustrated, at the height of horror and barbarism, the danger that these tools pose to our Republic. Algorithms are not the only ones responsible, but it is essential to be aware of their potentially destructive role. The major digital players have a vocation – this is a demand that citizens must make – to modify its “philosophy”, just as much as they must hunt down content that sustains anti-republican hysteria.
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