Technology has created our toxic political landscape, and only technology can fix it.

WITH Kamala Harris And Donald Trump America is more divided than it has been since 1861, according to most polling averages. UC Davis study last year found that a significant proportion of Americans believe that violence for political ends can be justified. For the first time in history, there have been at least two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, and possibly a third, one of which came within a hair’s breadth of killing Trump.

It is also the first time in history that we have had to go to such extreme measures to protect poll workers and poll workers. According to NBC NewsElection officials have been threatened, harassed, and harassed simply for doing their jobs. Incidents such as alleged burning of ballot boxes and threats against election officials are occurring across the country. In Maricopa County, Arizona (one of the hotbeds of conspiracy theories), officials have turned the county’s vote-counting center into a war zone, with snipers manning the roof, metal detectors and guards at every entrance, swarms of drones watching and security guards overhead. cameras and floodlights in case of potential attacks. In other states, schools are closed on Election Day so police can patrol polling places.

Regardless of who wins, Americans will wake up the morning after the election to a deeply divided country. But while pundits and political operatives rush to analyze voting patterns and campaign strategies, they will miss the real story: America’s social fabric wasn’t torn apart by politicians (though they certainly helped)—it was algorithmically optimized into oblivion. The only way to fix America is to fix the algorithms that broke it.

Algorithms—sophisticated programs that, among other things, determine what pieces of content individual users see in their feeds—have fundamentally changed the way we consume news and information. They don’t care if the content is false, divisive, or downright destructive. They simply identify the most “engaging” content – and the fact is that we are more likely to respond to content that evokes a strong emotional response. As a result, our attention is directed toward the most polarizing and edgy videos, posts, and other little nuggets that spark anger, keeping us in a constant cycle of outrage that feeds the platforms’ need for profit.

These algorithmic curators don’t just predict our interests; they shape them. They turned us into a nation of people living in parallel, but fundamentally different realities. Take any major issue facing the world today: immigration, gun control, foreign policy, Israel, climate change or abortion. The social media universe you live in doesn’t just influence your stance on these issues—it determines what facts you see, what experts you hear, and what arguments you encounter. As a result, Americans no longer just disagree; we act from very different sets of premises, facts, and beliefs.

According to Pew Research Center data for 2024. survey4 in 10 young Americans say they use TikTok “regularly” to get news. Other platforms include Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and X, according to the report. published in the magazine Science found that emotionally charged content spreads faster on these platforms.

When you dig into TikTok’s algorithmsit’s really scary how manipulative they can be – sure, sometimes they’re just there to show you funny dance videos or funny memes, but also to share misinformation about some the most difficult questions face to face with the planet. As a result, we exaggerate the fiction more than the truth. A Study 2016–2018 The MIT Media Lab found that false news stories are retweeted 70% more often than true news stories. Now that AI has become part of the disinformation news cycle, the situation will only get worse.

The path forward to fix all this is not difficult. In fact, it’s incredibly simple. Tech companies need to fundamentally rethink the role of their algorithms in our democracy. Instead of optimizing participation at all costs, they need to start optimizing something much more valuable: informed citizenship. This means redesigning their algorithms to promote actual content. And Show people information that does not correspond to their existing beliefs. This means introducing friction into the exchange of unverified information. And yes, that means potentially sacrificing some of those precious engagement metrics that have made social media executives some of the most influential people on the planet.

Coming out of yet another bitter election, we face a choice: continue down the path of algorithmic division, where Americans increasingly live in different realities, or demand that tech companies accept their role as stewards of our national conversation. The technology that kept us apart can be reverse engineered with a few lines of code to bring us back together (or at least a little closer). It’s clear that someone likes it Elon Musk has no interest in this one, but others, for example Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel Snapchat and Neil Mohan YouTube maybe. Because while we may disagree on politics and politicians, we can certainly agree on this: democracy cannot function when its citizens no longer share a basic understanding of reality.