Algorithms Are Not Apolitical

“What is most perilous about this censorship is that it masquerades behind the mask of neutrality. It is predicated upon the belief algorithms are apolitical, that moderation is objective, and visibility is meritorious.”

I found this quote doing research into "algorithmic censorship” from an article published in the journal Frontiers in Communication (“Digital silence: How algorithmic censorship undermines academic freedom in the Global South,” 2025) While the report covers different terrain than the film and media world that I cover, the overriding analysis still applies: “The new silencers do not ban books, imprison thinkers, or storm newsrooms,” the authors write. “They reside in the code.”

I’ve written two articles over the last couple years on the ways in which Meta, most egregiously, censors and blocks the promotion of content that its algorithms don’t like — first in 2024, for Filmmaker Magazine (“Doc (and Art-Film) Blocking: How Algorithmic Content Moderation is Hurting Indie Fi…