How Iran’s internet blackout is quietly affecting your social media feed | Debunked - video Dailymotion

How Iran’s internet blackout is reshaping everyone’s algorithm

Transcript

00:00This is how Iran's deliberate internet shutdown is shaping your algorithm right now.

00:05Internet disruptions are an incident that algorithms aren't designed for.

00:10Internet shutdowns by government silence independent media.

00:13They make it harder to arrange protests and generally weaken democracy.

00:19But their impact doesn't stop at national borders and here's why.

00:24Algorithms on social media platforms and other online areas are really designed

00:29to work when there's a free flow of information.

00:33When there is a void or an information vacuum from a certain area,

00:37the algorithm still has to satisfy its constraints.

00:40Which means that if that footage suddenly stops flowing,

00:44the algorithm is going to need to fill that space with other content.

00:48And the problem here is that that content is no longer what the user actually expected or wanted.

00:53It's now slightly less relevant information, potentially even misleading or disinformation

00:59or misinformation that's going from irrelevant sources or those trying to alter the narrative.

01:04Not out of malice necessarily, but because they have certain requirements.

01:07So instead of having vaguely kind of accurate figures based on broad collection of information

01:14from the ground, you end up with extrapolations,

01:16which do tell us that something very bad is happening on the ground.

01:20It makes it harder for the world to react and know what's going on.

01:23I think that's exactly what authorities intend when they switch off the internet.