Preventing the Misuse of Digital Influence: The Development of Systems for Preserving and Analyzing Potentially Harmful Online Content, and Why Such Systems Are Essential for Democracy

Abstract

This monograph describes the decade-long development and 2023 deployment of the world’s first nationwide system for preserving and analyzing personalized ephemeral content being sent daily by technology companies to a large number of users – in this case, registered voters in all 50 US states. Online ephemeral content has been shown in controlled studies to have unprecedented power to shift people’s thinking and behavior without their awareness. Normally, because such content is ephemeral, it gives tech companies the ability to influence people without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace; hence, the importance of building systems for preserving such content. This essay also addresses an important public policy issue: To what extent, if any, have technology companies been using ephemeral content for political purposes? Dr. Epstein addresses this issue by summarizing and critiquing three recent studies that have defended the tech companies. He shows that two of these studies have ties to the tech companies and that all of them have fatally flawed methodology. He argues that because ephemeral content is highly personalized, the only way we can get an accurate picture of how such content is being employed is by “looking over the shoulders” of a large, representative sample of real users (with their permission) as they are receiving such content, and then aggregating and analyzing the content, much as the Nielsen company does worldwide to rate TV viewership. The monitoring system he has built aggregates and analyzes such content in real time, and it has repeatedly identified politically biased content sufficient to have shifted millions of votes in national elections in the US. In the 2024 Presidential election, Epstein's nationwide monitoring system appears to have leveled the political playing field, causing Google to reduce its bias substantially in both Google search and YouTube recommendations. Even more important, it appears to have forced Google to stop sending partisan go-vote reminders in the critical days just before the election. Epstein concludes that large-scale monitoring systems must become a permanent feature of the internet to protect our democracy, our autonomy, and the minds of our children from consequential manipulations by the algorithms of technology companies, both now and in the foreseeable future.

Keywords: online influence, online monitoring, Big Tech, search engine manipulation effect, search suggestion effect, video manipulation effect, opinion matching effect, answer bot effect, SEME, targeted messaging effect, differential demographics effect, digital personalization effect, multiple exposure effect, multiple platforms effect