Cass Sunstein’s ‘#Republic’ explores dangers of social media curation
The internet once promised to be the great equalizer. Technology would democratize access to information and remove barriers between people who wished to connect and share ideas, snatching power from a cluster of institutions that had controlled access, such as government and media, and giving it to anyone with a Wi-Fi connection. Yet an unfortunate and largely unintended consequence of the rise of social media is that instead of being better informed and exposed to ever-broadening viewpoints, research shows that Americans today are more polarized and draw from shrinking pools of news. Many people now operate in virtual gated communities as a result of their culled Facebook and Twitter feeds and the opaque corporate algorithms that organize people into invisible groups. In a new book, “#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media,” Harvard Law School’s Cass R. Sunstein argues that social media curation dramatically limits exposure to views and...