Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says algorithms are largely to blame for the current political polarization across the country.
“I do believe our media landscape has changed dramatically,” the New York Democrat said while streaming on Instagram Live on Sunday. “And the social media landscape has changed dramatically, even since 2020, even in just the last couple of years, in ways that are very hard for people to understand.”
“We were already politically polarized, but our country has become algorithmically polarized,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
The congresswoman made the comments as she discussed the Trump administration’s deployment of the military to cities like Los Angeles and Portland, saying that many of the images circulating online of protests in those cities were misleading.
She said that polarization has affected people across the political spectrum, and that people on both the left and right have fallen into social media echo chambers.
“It is hard, I think, for folks to understand the broader landscape of public opinion,” she said. “Because there are people that are living in a MAGA universe online, that their algorithms feed that to them.”
“People in that mindset think that no one else really has differing opinions,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “And that happens as well in progressive content and algorithms.”
Polarization driven by social media has been an area of concern for lawmakers on Capitol Hill for years, though the focus has often been on how foreign countries might seek to exploit platforms to sow political discord — or on content moderation policies.
In 2021, executives from several Big Tech companies testified specifically about how their algorithms impact political discourse online.
Ocasio-Cortez said that, given algorithmic polarization, it’s important for people to document things themselves and to try to persuade people through community-building.
“Oftentimes, the things that persuade people is not just about facts or policy, as much as some people would love that to be,” she said. “But it’s also about psychology and community.”
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