Stadtratte via Getty Images Last week, the United States Senate played host to a number of social media company VPs during hearings on the potential dangers presented by algorithmic bias and amplification. While that meeting almost immediately broke down into a partisan circus of grandstanding grievance airing, Democratic senators did manage to focus a bit on how these recommendation algorithms might contribute to the spread of online misinformation and extremist ideologies. The issues and pitfalls presented by social algorithms are well-known and have been well-documented. So, really, what are we going to do about it? “So I think in order to answer that question, there's something critical that needs to happen: we need more independent researchers being able to analyze platforms and their behavior,” Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, Director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, told Engadget. Social media companies “know that they need to be more transparent in what's happening on their platforms, but I'm of the firm belief that, in order for that transparency to be genuine, there needs to be collaboration between the platforms and independent peer reviewed, empirical research.“