linguistic:paraphrasing, information:extraction, information:classification, linguistic:translation
Threat to democracy

A number of commentators and experts have argued that social media companies have incentives that to maximize user engagement with sensational, emotive and controversial material that discourages a healthy discourse that democracies depend on. Zack Beauchamp of Vox calls it an authoritarian medium because of how it is incentivized to stir up hate and division that benefits aspiring autocrats. The Economist describes social media as vulnerable to manipulation by autocrats. Informed dialogue, a shared sense of reality, mutual consent and participation can all suffer due to the business model of social media. Political polarization can be one byproduct. This has implications for the likelihood of political violence. Siva Vaidhyanathan argues for a range of solutions including privacy protections and enforcing anti-trust laws. Andrew Leonard describes Pol.is as one possible solution to the divisiveness of traditional discourse on social media that has damaged democracies, citing the use of its algorithm to instead prioritize finding consensus.