2026/01/01 by Vitaly Zuevsky · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social Media and Politics #Wikis in Education and Collaboration
paper · doi:10.2139/ssrn.6802343
crossref issued 2026/01/01 · crossref published 2026/01/01 · openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · crossref created 2026/06/01 · crossref deposited 2026/06/01 · crossref indexed 2026/06/01 · openalex created_date 2026/06/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Informatization brings about great advances in scientific and economic development. We have witnessed how the Internet and the Web 2.0 model disrupted centralized media production by enabling individual contributors to compete on an equal footing. Eventually, however, social media platforms developed proprietary algorithms to control what content users see, with a view to maximizing time spent on the platform and, consequently, their own ad revenue. It is highly likely that such "informational traps" tip social homeostasis towards polarization, attention deficit, and potentially the spread of populism. Here we propose a recommendation system promoting the least frequent posters to negate online activism. In real systems a responsible user should be allowed to dial between the present engagement-centric algorithm and the proposed coverage-centric alternative. We suggest the need for a policy akin to the GDPR that would require the platforms to offer such choice.