Jail. At least the threat of jail. That’s what needs to happen after the latest big tech ‘glitch’. This time it’s Amazon’s ‘Alexa’ robot assistant device telling people why to vote for Kamala but no reasons for voting for Trump. The company is calling it a ‘glitch’ and say’s they will look into it. Well, over here? We’re tired of the glitches. It’s been years of ‘glitches’ in election cycles, and they only seem to go one way.
Alexa is just the latest. Google just had a ‘glitch’ with the Trump assassination attempt. The search engine had a ‘glitch’ when user would search for information on that event. Not to be outdone, Alexa also appeared to jump in on the denial bandwagon.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg just admitted to censoring content on his platform at the request of the White House. How much more of this are we supposed to accept? How about none? Here’s what you do: Have some flipping transparency! If the program designers say is a ‘glitch’ of the algorithm, then show us the algorithm. Publicly walk us through it. Show us precisely where it went wrong and how the same people who wrote the program are going to fix it. And after that? The next time a biased ‘glitch’ happens, someone goes to jail. They are selling a faulty product. It doesn’t work as advertised. If a fire extinguisher had this many ‘glitches’ people would be in jail. We should expect the same level of certainty with information.
The threat of jail would solve this ‘glitch’ problem really quick.
People are living their lives and getting information digitally. If something doesn’t happen online and isn’t reported fairly it’s as if it never happened. This affects not only our elections but our reality. Here’s a little taste of a dystopian 1984 moment that should deeply trouble you. If we do nothing? This is what we get.
