Opinions and Algorithms: Trust, Neutrality and Legitimacy

Abstract


 
 
 The article is devoted to opinions and algorithms in the digital age, with a focus on how the manipulation of the former while using the latter affects trust and legitimacy. In addition, some attention is paid to the issue of neutrality, both in relation to unbiased opinions and in relation to unbiased technologies. The article raises questions about whether we can be self-determining and self-governing agents, especially in terms of how we make decisions and what opinions we trust, if we are skillfully led to this by algorithms or those behind them.
 
 
 
 Considering that not only corporations, but also governments today use technologies to influence our preferences and opinions, issues of autonomy and personal interests are touched upon, as well as the problem of nudging for certain behaviors that are defined as the best for people, including in a paternalistic sense. The article argues that the merging of everyday life with digital spaces and algorithmization form our experience as a fundamentally new one and does not contribute to the ability to separate imposed interests from really our own.
 The questions of how power and legitimacy are redistributed in a digital society dependent on algorithms are discussed in this study. It has been suggested that the impact on our preferences and management of them, when someone try to sell us certain opinions, may be more dangerous than selling us goods and services, since it destroys institutional and interpersonal trust and contributes to the erosion of public institutions. The study shows how some technologies, primarily algorithmic ones, which are not neutral either in their essence or in the way they are used by their creators and owners, contribute to growing addiction and impoverish human interaction and the ability to form meanings.