April 20, 2016

What if you could stop Trump becoming president?

located:	USA
editor:	Vanessa Ellingham

There's an incredibly popular Twitter movement that fires up every time there's a US election.

No matter whether they're Democrats, Republicans or totally disappointed with all of the above, every four years, thousands of Twitter users can be found threatening to move to New Zealand if their desired election outcome doesn't come to pass.

Such is the seriousness with which many American voters take the election result: if it's not their candidate, they might just up sticks and move to the bottom of the other side of the world.

So if there was a way to single-handedly prevent a candidate from being voted in, would they do it?

We've known since at least the last American election that Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook have the capabilities to sway general political opinion using algorithms. Until now the company has denied that they would ever act on this power.

But last week Gizmodo reported that some Facebook employees had taken a poll on whether they should use their technology to prevent Trump becoming the next president.

This would be a pleasing result for many. Trump's xenophobia and general buffoonery have not endeared him to much of the world, and the idea of people voting for this man to lead a major world power is terrifying to most.

But does that make it ok to step in and 'play God'?

When people ask "if you could travel back in time, where would you go?" the response is so often, "I'd go back to stop Hitler". Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg - or at least one of his engineers - sees this as their opportunity.

In order to do so, we'd have to accept a major corporation controlling politics. Some would say that's the system the USA operates under right now.

It's the slippery slope effect that makes me hesitant. Right now engineers get to decide what pops up on our newsfeeds. Do we really want them to decide who runs our countries as well?