Balancing Social Media?

Intriguing, but seems this could also be directly misused.

Conflicting Views on Social Media Balanced By an Algorithm
Aalto University

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland and the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy have developed an algorithm that balances information exposure so social media users can be exposed to information from both sides of a discussion. The program uses a greedy algorithm paradigm to find optimal choices at each stage, which works by efficiently selecting a set of influential users who can be convinced to spread information about their viewpoint to the other side. "We use word clouds as a qualitative case study to complement our quantitative results, whereby words in the cloud represent the words found in the users' profiles," says Aalto's Kiran Garimella. He notes the algorithm examines the content of a few influential users to find terms from both sides of a discussion. "Thus, these users can play a significant role in initiating a social debate and help to spread the arguments of one side to the other," Garimella says.  .... "