Twitter’s “What’s Happening?” suggestion tab is offering a bit of a curveball this afternoon for many of us. Wedged between William Shatner returning from 10 minutes in Heaven and Brett Favre stories is... um... “Jesus is the Son of God?”
I am a Jewish person... some might even say very much so. If anyone is aware of this, it’s Twitter’s all-seeing, all-knowing, all-invasive algorithms. So why am I, and so many other presumed heretics, getting proselytized to within Jack Dorsey’s hellscape, of all ironic digital spaces?
We have reached out to Mr. Dorsey and Twitter to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Aren’t these supposed to know us better than ourselves? —
To be honest, rather innocuous religious suggestions are the least of our worries when it comes to social media’s algorithmic horrorshows. AI-driven programs like these have been repeatedly proven to be racist, biased, and often just simply inaccurate.
Still, something as semi-amusing as “Jesus is King” tweets briefly flooding a Nice Jewish Boy’s Twitter timeline could actually imply larger, complex problems when it comes to religious-based algorithmic systems. It’s almost as if social media systems are offensive on ethical, legal, and spiritual levels now... and don’t really know that much about us beyond lumping us into advertiser-friendly demographics, of which religion evidently isn’t an especially pressing one.
