Algorithms, Reparations, Repetitions

This chapter examines the connection between digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and transitional justice. It focuses on the victim's rights both to be known and to be forgotten. The right to be known provides a voice to victims by allowing them to act as information sources regarding the injustices that they have suffered. The right to be forgotten allows individuals to construct social relations that are not conditioned on their past actions, which in turn grants them the benefit of starting anew. Digital media and artificial intelligence make both of these rights especially susceptible to challenges. Algorithms reward popularity, which can generate epistemic bubbles and echo chambers that manipulate information and increase the spread of disinformation, which in turn silences victims’ voices, empowers epistemic reparations, and imperils nuanced moral judgments. Even where law, such as the European Union's ‘right-to-be-forgotten directive,’ requires the delisting of an individual's personal data, compliance is uneven, especially on platforms resistant to content moderation and platforms that are overloaded with data. This chapter highlights the ethical and practical necessity of preserving victims’ epistemic power and balancing public interest while demonstrating how the structural and algorithmic features of platforms are prone to unintentionally undermining essential transitional justice processes.