Online Mobs Produce Offline Mobs — Facing Up to the Consequences of Democracy by Algorithm

Online mobs produce offline mobs. Every part of what happened on the sixth was orchestrated online, mostly using the mainstream platforms. The logistics: Where to meet, and the objective. The coordinated attack on the Capital, down to the minute details of how to bring illegal weapons into the District of Columbia over the Maryland border, this was achieved in the open, on mainstream platforms.

The violence to our national symbols and many individuals shocked many, but it should not have surprised us. We have engaged in a vast social experiment, the replacement of editors, publishers and journalists with algorithms managed in secret by a handful of companies for their own financial interests.

Those who compare the algorithmic distribution of news to the sinister multi-decade right wing media apparatus are missing the point. There is no intelligence behind this, sinister or otherwise. There is no editor, publisher, man or woman at the end of the line to attribute. There is nothing but a black box that not even their overseers can control.

The global task of building peace and security in the world is not possible without free press.

Most people only read the word “free” in “free press.” “Press” is the profession of journalism, supported by fact checkers and moderated by editors who ask hard questions.

It is dangerous to put the lunatic notions of Qanon on an even playing field with the New York Times or even Fox News. If we ignore this danger or allow the status quo to be the starting point — we do so against the lessons of not just the past week, four years but the last 244 years.