The Great Information Migration

Here’s a short story in 23 facts. It’ll take 2 minutes to read.

More than one in two people on the planet use products provided by Meta and Google.

These companies are now embedding the use of AI in their products. Google has a 90% share of global searches for information.

As AI filters our information it uses different sources than journalists would. Google's AI overviews are more likely to draw on You Tube and Linked In than The Financial Times or the BBC. And they are already causing drops in web traffic to professional journalism of up 89%.

Chat GPT is more likely to give you answers to health queries based on Reddit or Wikipedia than the NHS or CDC.

With 19% of ChatGPT queries now essentially for search, this matters. It’s not great when evidence shows the stylistic tics of LLMs appearing in more and more Parliamentary debates.

The new role of AI in filtering information is especially worrying in a world where more than half of people in the US see social media as their main source of news.

What we see on those platforms is shaped by algorithms which are designed to capture and retain our attention. 70% of YouTube watchtime flows from algorithmic recommendations. On TikTok this is likely to be close to 100%.

A recent study applied 6 different algorithmic designs to a blackbox social media ecosystem populated by AI chatbots. All of them yielded echo chambers, polarisation and outsized influence for a small number of users.

Algorithmic social platforms have harmful consequences for some people - children spending more than 3 hours a day on social media have more than double the risk of future mental health problems - but these platforms face far looser regulation than newspapers ever did. 

They continue to claim not to be publishers despite the fact that YouTube offers AI services to 'improve' user's videos.

In late 2024 many social platforms pulled the plug on their efforts to limit the spread of harmful, hateful and deceitful content citing their preference for 'free speech' - but it's hardly free if they have their thumbs on the scales when we're scrolling.

'This needs to change' you might say but the financial power of these companies is insane. Meta and Alphabet alone have a market capitalisation greater than the GDP of every country on the planet except the US and China.

Their lobbying power is huge too. Facebook spent $22.4 million on lobbying in 2024 and has one lobbyist in Washington DC for every two members of Congress. A look at the UK Register of Member's Interests shows Google at the top of the list for lobbying of Labour aides and more than ⅔ of lobbyists for Meta and Google in the EU are estimated to have worked for the European Commission!

The chances of forcing greater transparency and accountability on these platforms and the AI companies set to transform them are low whilst their owners rub shoulders at state dinners and our leaders see them as an integral piece of our future prosperity.

Social platforms are now deeply embedded in our societies. The recent near-revolution in Nepal had roots on TikTok but stepped up a gear when the government turned off social media because so many companies rely on it for their business.

The Climate Action Network has more than 1800 NGO members worldwide but campaigners for a better information ecosystem are still struggling to be heard with many emerging camapigners forced to scale back amidst outcry over 'disinformation activists and fact-checkers'.

If you care about issues like migration, climate change and human rights we’re not going to make more progress until we fix the information environment. There’s a direct relationship between that environment and democratic well-being. If you’re not already trying to change that already, it’s time to start - before it’s too late.