Former Vice President Al Gore drew criticism for his claim that social media algorithms represent a threat to democracy as he recently criticized the leader of a United Nations climate forum.
At the recent COP28 climate conference, the 2000 presidential candidate-turned-climate change activist said that social media has “disrupted the balances that used to exist that made representative democracy work much better.”
A functioning democracy, he said, needs to have what he called a “shared base of knowledge that serves as a basis for reasoning together collectively.” However, “social media that is dominated by algorithms” can upset the balance because it pulls users into “rabbit holes.”
The algorithms are “the digital equivalent of AR-15s. They ought to be banned, they really ought to be banned,” Mr. Gore said. “It’s an abuse of the public forum.”
“If you spend too much time in the echo chamber, what’s weaponized is another form of AI, not artificial intelligence, artificial insanity,” Mr. Gore stated, which drew laughs from the audience. “QAnon is just the best-known version of artificial insanity,” he added.
“And these devices are the enemies of self-government, and they’re the enemies of democracy. We need reforms for both democracy and capitalism,” he said.
Social media platforms have faced scrutiny for years. Attention to the potential threats created by algorithms rose in 2021 after a Facebook whistleblower testified on Capitol Hill that the company’s decisions over its algorithms “are a huge problem—for children, for public safety, for democracy.”
Mr. Gore’s comments drew criticism from prominent users on social media.
“To globalist elites, free speech is a dangerous weapon that must be seized,” said Rogan O'Handley, known as “DC Draino,” on X, adding that “globalist elites” want users to listen to propaganda and obey directives. But he said he could hear the fear in Mr. Gore’s voice.
“They know we’re waking up,” Mr. O'Handley said.
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro also commented.
Unhappy With Climate Conference Leader
Mr. Gore, meanwhile, offered critical remarks against the organizers of the COP28 event because the “world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” and he said a draft issued by the organizers “reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word,” referring to the coalition of oil-producing nations.“It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously. There are 24 hours left to show whose side the world is on: the side that wants to protect humanity’s future by kickstarting the orderly phase out of fossil fuels or the side of the petrostates and the leaders of the oil and gas companies that are fueling the historic climate catastrophe,” he wrote on X.
Last week, Mr. Gore criticized Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the United Nations climate talks, who is also president of the national oil company of the host nation, United Arab Emirates. Mr. Gore said Mr. al-Jaber’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. is “one of the largest and one of the dirtiest, by many measures, oil companies in the world.”
For his part, Mr. al-Jaber said that there is “no science” behind calls to phase-out oil and gas.
“You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuel,“ the official said. ”Please help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Over the years, Mr. Gore has made a number of climate-related predictions that haven’t panned out. In 2009, the former vice president warned there was a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap could be completely melted within five to seven years.
In the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” Mr. Gore forecast that the world’s sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet “in the near future.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that between 1993 and 2021, sea levels rose about 3.8 inches.
