Jonathan Haidt: Why Social Media Makes Our Society Stupid

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2022-07-21

YouTube video id: yE9Z2WUDYwg

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE9Z2WUDYwg

about the process and stuff like that
can you can you just like in as briefly
as possible talk about like in your view
what is the stupid that we've been
living in in the past decade and then
why exactly is social media responsible
for that
so this stupid yeah thank you for giving
me the chance to really clarify that
some people told me i shouldn't use the
word stupid in the title because it
seems insulting so let me thought it was
a great headline yeah but sorry
yeah actually the atlantic it wasn't my
title the atlantic a b tested and that's
the one that won okay um technology man
yeah technology a lot of good things
about it a lot of powerful things about
it yeah um so americans are getting
smarter over the decades iq is rising in
our country and around the world it's
not that americans are getting stupid um
what i argued in this atlantic essay was
that we have this new thing called
structural stupidity and just as you can
have structural racism even if nobody is
a racist you can have structural
stupidity even if no one is stupid and
so we see this in universities this is
where i really got onto it
um i i entered i started graduate school
in 1987 and universities have always
been like these walled gardens where you
can entertain ideas and it was actually
good to be provocative and our patron
saint is socrates who said he was the
gadfly of athens of course they put him
to death for it eventually
but
we always valued people who questioned
received wisdom we thought that was a
good thing to do
but suddenly in 2014 2015 we had this
new thing happening where if you
questioned received wisdom around sacred
issues especially race gender
immigration a few other topics
if you question receive wisdom the
social consequences were so severe that
you learned quickly not to question
receive wisdom and then you would have
just people saying and doing all kinds
of stupid things
so i saw that in the academic world
just people
failing to make the most basic social
science observations about base rates
about other causal factors and that
started in 2015 really hit us hard in
2015 we got really stupid and we
implemented all these policies that
backfire and we just keep using them
mandatory diversity training
um you know all these all these things
we did in response to protesters that
don't work that make things worse
um and then around 2017 2018 this
these ideas leaked out
from from universities into journalism
bunch of other areas
in part because you guys hire people
from our elite universities they bring
these bad ideas with them but what
they're really bringing with them is
that a small number of young people use
social media not to make arguments not
to respond to arguments but to destroy
anyone who contradicts their sacred
values and that's what makes a group
stupid if journalists refuse to cover
the other side and you hear this among
young journalists why should we give a
platform to the other side i'm not going
to interview people on both sides of
this question
then journalists get stupid and so
that's what i meant by structural
stupidity and now why is social media
responsible for the structural stupidity
i mean the this oh because yeah well
okay go ahead and then we can talk about
it i mean you know look if if we lived
in a place where people could just
literally stab you with a knife
if you said anything wrong we'd all be
walking on eggshells and we wouldn't
ever want to offend and
but we don't live in that world if
somebody stabs you with a knife then
they'll they're going to go to jail so
that's not an issue
but having a relationship ruined or
damaged being publicly shamed or called
names
is really scary for people
the romans observed that people were
often less afraid of death than they
were of social uh of of social
slandering and social ruination
uh and so what twitter in particular
twitter's the worst here but it's it's
also on facebook and slack and other
channels
um what twitter did is it essentially
gave everybody a dart gun where anybody
could shoot a dart into anyone else like
imagine if you literally if i were to
question anything about police violence
or the gender gap in pay or anything i
would have questioned that instantly i
would get shot with 20
darts like physical darts penetrating my
flesh like really really hurt um i'd be
very careful what i said about any of
those topics and that's a margin that's
what happened social media gave
everybody a dark gun and as a result
because most people don't want to shoot
anybody but the far left the far right
trolls a few groups of people
shoot moderates in their institutions
and they shoot the leaders of the
institutions so that's why we've seen we
keep saying why don't the university
president stand up for academic values
and they rarely do why is that
because they get shot full of darts
right and uh i thought something that
was interesting in your story was
talking about like who's actually
uh you know the ones that are sharing on
social media i think this is yeah this
is the right step from your story uh
let's see um who's using who's using
what you call you know these dart guns
um
let's see the furthest to the right
known as devoted conservatives comprised
six percent of the u.s population the
group furthest to the left the
progressive activists comprised eight
percent of the population
the prog the progressive
activists were by far the most prolific
group on social media seven percent
seventy percent at shared political
content over the previous year the
devotive devoted conservatives followed
at 56
so so talk about like who's actually
shaping the conversation and and by the
way like
before we well why don't you go ahead
and then i'll ask my follow-up on that
sure
yeah so um
most people what i've what i've seen
throughout this i got i began getting
involved in this issues when campuses
started going crazy in 2014 2015.
most people are reasonable decent don't
want to hurt anyone most students want
to learn
um the problem is that um is that a
small number of people who
who want to display their morality and
want to change the world um
uh use methods that they think will be
effective
um but that end up hurting people and
backfiring for their cause
and so um those numbers you gave that
was from the the hidden tribe study by a
british group more in common they
studied american electorate also the
british electorate
um what they found through cluster
analysis is seven groups of people
and the one on the far right
is that you know that's the
the poli they didn't say this but you
can see in the report they're
authoritarians they are the more
narrow-minded they are the more racist
they're the whitest of all the groups so
they are the second most politically
active group and if you ever cross the
right you're going to get death threats
it's very scary to cross that group on
social media
but the group furthest left the
progressive activists that's the second
whitest of all the groups it's actually
very interesting this is mostly young
white people
who have a kind of politics in which
again they don't learn to make arguments
they don't persuade they attack and
intimidate
um and and you know and that there's a
role for that i suppose in politics in
the public square but not in
universities not in newspapers in
journalism so it really it's the you
know the right has really no
i never i've never met anyone on the far
right practically in my life um but in
universities there are a lot of people
the progressive activists who
um
are sort of given what's the word not
free reign people sort of
are very careful around them and it has
a really chilling impact on what we say
and therefore prevents us from doing our
jobs
in fact i'd like to cite an article i
read last year
headline is the man who built the
retweet we handed a loaded weapon to a
four-year-old the button that ruined the
internet and how to fix it by this guy
alex kantrowitz that's right so
you know so it's
and this is one of the points of my
article that i didn't know until i
teamed up with tobias rose stockwell who
who's the tech writer um social media
was not at all toxic in 2004 you know
when the facebook came out
in myspace and if you're sharing photos
of your dog there's no problem
um it really was the move to the news
feed and then especially
the implementation of the retweet button
which became the share button and then
also the like button but things just
become much more engaging
algorithmicized and viral
and that couldn't that didn't start till
2009 with the retweet button so you you
tell the story of this engineer chris
wetherill
and you know they thought that they were
giving more people voice and he's a
progressive he thought this is gonna be
great for for you know for black people
for women for all the groups that don't
have voice this really lets them get
their voice out there but what happens
they're exactly the groups that get
swarmed and mobbed they're exactly the
groups
that get most harassed
so uh so i think this hyperviral um
these changes in architecture around
2009 that's what i focus in on that's
where i think the real problem is yeah
and i i really like how you put it how
we moved from connection to performance
and you know that's something i wish i
thought of when i was re writing this
story you know speaking with chris about
what the retweet and the share button
has done to social media but it did
change the way that people use social
media from you know let's this is the
way we connect with people share
something that our small group will be
interested in and then in the name of
engagement you know it became
performance how can i reach the most
people and often you do that by stoking
outrage yeah well that's right and so
this is so i'd like to make a point here
this always bugs me when people say oh
yeah sure you know you're all critical
of social media but thank god we had
social media during the pandemic what
would we have done without social media
to which i say yeah can you imagine if
all we had
was the telephone and texting and zoom
and and skype and multiplayer video
games and whatsapp and uh and all these
other ways that we can communicate
and all we were missing was platforms in
which you post you write content and
then you wait and hope that others will
like it retweet it comment on it those
perform it's the performative platforms
that's we're talking about we're not
talking about the internet we're not
talking about communications technology
communication is good
we're talking about a small number of
platforms where people do the labor they
create the content in exchange for
prestige that's what i think is is
destroying a generation in terms of
mental health and that's what i think is
most damaging to democracies so let me
see if i can sum up what the argument is
here really is that social media is
being used very effectively for outrage
and it's the
people on the furthest
ex most extreme parts of their parties
that end up
uh being the ones that want to stoke the
outrage the most hence creating this
kind of stupid moment in u.s politics
where
we're being ruled by the extremes
that's right let me add two things to
that there are two other groups that use
this very effectively uh one is trolls
and these are men they're almost always
men i've never heard of a female troll
um who enjoy harassing burning things
down causing trouble it's like the joker
in the batman series
so they're men who are extremely
disagreeable they get banned from
platforms
um so each man used to just be able to
be an to a few you know dozen or
100 people a year now they can be an
to millions of people a year and
that just turns people off it makes
people shut up it makes people leave
and the fourth group is russian agents
the the russian um
the russians began what they called
active measures against the us sort of
in the 1920s under lenin but with a big
increase in 1957 or 59 they authorized
this program to really try to mess us up
divide us make us hate each other um so
they used to have to send people over
from russia to do that and beginning but
once with social media they were
studying it obviously this is not the
soviet union anymore but of course
vladimir putin is a kgb agent where his
enemy
so they they literally turn on the
switch in 2013 and here i'm drawing on
renee daresta's work they turn on the
switch in 2013 to really go live with
their efforts to mess us up this is
before trump declares his candidacy um
so social media has been a gift to
america's enemies as well as to
america's
oh that's that's pretty nice maybe we'll
put that on the full quote yeah so um so
then let me i have some questions to ask
you about this first of all if we're if
we're going real stupid how do you
explain the fact that um that joe biden
who's as centrist as they come you know
sort of a right leading democrat um is
the president of the united states right
now and crushed trump is a popular vote
yeah yeah no that's right so this is
exact this is like i think one of the
most important things uh one of the most
important points in my atlantic essay
which i think nobody has picked up on or
commented on
is the asymmetry between the stupidity
on the right and left
and so
so if you're on the left
you see the stupidity of the republican
party and it is undeniable and it is
criminal and it is beyond anything we've
had in american history i mean they
tried to steal an election they stole a
supreme court seat you know with
mcconnell um the republican party is
horrible i hate them i want them to fail
over and over again and i've been trying
to help the democrats since 2004 to do
it there is no contest here the the
republican party is the stupid party
they shoot their moderates they don't
have any more moderates other than liz
cheney and a couple you know but they
used to have more than three and now
they down to whatever just a couple the
republican party is a stupid party no
doubt about that
now
if you talk to conservatives however
what you see is a big asymmetry that
liberals don't get it's not the
democratic party that's stupid the
democratic party
has moderates and the far left and guess
who wins usually the moderates
so the democratic party is a functional
party they have debates the moderates
usually win there's a big asymmetry the
stupidity on the left is the cultural
left this 2k on the left is the
progressive activist and i'm not calling
them stupidest people i'm saying because
they use intimidation rather than
persuasion
they the
far left now in america does not
persuade people
it it wins by intimidation now you can
do that you can take over school board
you can uh take over a company you can
cause your company or your school or
your school board to say all kinds of
crazy things
until election day
election day is the one day every other
year
when it actually matters what most
people think and this is why the
democrats can't win this is why i'm
almost giving up on them i mean i've
been really hoping that the democrats
can beat the republicans three elections
in a row and that would cause the reform
there are smart reformers in the
republican party want to make it a
middle-class party i want them to win
but i finally realized the democrats
can't win three elections in a row
because cultural left now empowered by
social media
is so good at pyrrhic victories empiric
victory is one where you you win the
battle but the cost is so high that your
side ultimately loses and so what the
democrats have what the what the
progressive activists have done
on police reform on education uh on
covet on so many things on covert
restrictions what they've done is they
keep winning victory after victory that
is so offensive to people in every
ethnic group let me make this clear
the the hidden tribe study and others
find that majorities of everybody hate
wokeness black white male female even
majority of democrats don't like
wokeness
but because of social media
a small number of progressive activists
are able to prevail so back to your
question yeah joe biden won because the
democratic party is not insane uh but
the democrats aren't
likely to get wiped out because
most people really hate what the
cultural left is doing in their schools
their companies and their country right
and she goes without saying but biden is
old as hell and it doesn't seem like
there's a strong bench uh behind him
that's right that's extremely concerning
to me so yeah yeah it's the the picture
of politics in the u.s is pretty ugly
right now it's a mess so um i i do want
to you know kind of ask you this like
this one thing we haven't covered yet
and then we're going to go to break but
um
how do you balance the need between like
needing to have accountability for folks
and then the fact that sometimes you
know people you might not like are the
ones that are bringing this
accountability to people like social
media can be good for a number of things
um can make good connections and it can
definitely when there are evils like it
can help you know call out those evils
and
make sure that you know they don't have
quarter because before this you know
i'm not saying this whole call-out
culture movement has been good but i'm
trying to at least make the argument
have you respond to it
before this
there were some really nasty people
running a lot of very powerful
organizations and it's a lot more
difficult for them to do that and i
think that's a good thing
yes um so let's talk about
accountability so i'm a professor in a
business school in fact my formal title
as you said is professor of ethical
leadership one of the things that we
always cover in my classes here at stern
is whistleblowing it's very important to
have a procedure so that if there are
violations of rules if there's
exploitation if there's crime
you have to have a way to report it you
have to have accountability if you don't
have accountability in an organization
you'll have corruption so i totally
agree
um now let's think about how you should
have accountability is twitter is
twitter helpful
in accountability is a world with
twitter is that a world that has more
accountability well in a very crude
sense yes because
anyone rather than just you know putting
an anonymous tip in the known as tip
line anyone can call out anyone publicly
from behind a fake name
is that really accountability
well that is accountability that is as
unaccountable as you can imagine
where anyone with a grudge against
anyone can call out anyone accuse them
of anything no context no proof no uh no
accountability for the caller router um
so i think what we're seeing is that
this is a nightmare this does not bring
us a world of justice this brings us a
world of fear
um i also often hear what you said like
oh you know without twitter and facebook
how could we have had the me too
movement how could we hold anyone to
account
well you know
blogs
youtube videos email change like it was
really like if if twitter and facebook
had never been invented
it's really easy if you if you want to
call that wrongdoing
it was really it'd be really easy
without those and at least there's more
accountability if you have to write a
blog post um or even if it's anonymous
you know the fact you have to put in the
effort to write a blog post whereas you
know 240 characters no accountability
accuse whoever whatever you want um so i
think that the principle the need for
accountability is a good one but if we
think consistently about it we want
accountable accountability not witch
hunts where whoever makes the most
accusations gets the most prestige and
the most safety from being accused
themselves right and a lot of the big
stories in the me too uh era didn't
really originate on twitter
they resulted from reporters actually
getting sources to come on record
so exactly that's right
however i will say
journalists yeah i mean as long as
journalists are doing their job yeah and
people have access to journalists and
now of course it's easy for journalists
to get the word out right so yeah we've
had accountability and tech has helped
with that
jonathan head is with us
height is with us
got it right this time professor of
ethical leadership at new york
university stern school of business
author of calling americanmind and you
could check out his story why the past
10 years of american life have been
uniquely stupid in the atlantic it's
also linked in the show notes we'll be
back right after this
and we're back here for the second half
of big technology podcast with professor
jonathan height welcome back professor
um you spoke in the first half about uh
russia's influence here i was as a
reporter like pretty close on a lot of
these
stories after the 2016 election
i'm beginning to think that it might
make sense to
minimize the the impact that russia and
you know potentially china can have
there's a section in your story why it's
about to get much worse
but you know we we haven't really seen
you know that much evidence after the
platforms were caught flat-footed with
the internet research agency in the 2016
election which was definitely bad and
impactful that they've been successful
and actually working to manipulate the
american public and i think the
arguments that you make about outrage
and and the loss of the center are so
strong that i do wonder if we need to
think about like ai powered chinese
propaganda and you know russian
disinformation where we're just not
seeing it as as a you know concrete
program uh problem that we're dealing
with today so can you explain a little
bit about why you bring them into the
argument yeah so um so this question
this is question uh this is question
five in the review does social media
enable foreign governments to increase
political dysfunction in the united
states and other democracies
and you if you go there you'll find that
there are a number of studies uh giving
evidence that they have been
active
and they have been working on it and
you'll find some studies
in section 5.2 is where we collect the
ones that are contrary that seem to say
that well actually the reach may not
have been that big and most of the
people who encountered this stuff
already believed it so
so if you operationalize it as the
effect on the average user how what
percentage of let's say facebook users
are actually influenced by russians and
it's you know i don't know what the
number is but it's not 10 it's you know
it's it's a very small number so you say
oh it's a small number i guess we don't
have to worry
that's one way to operationalize it but
look at it this way
the story that aids was created by a
government lab in i think fort detrick
maryland this was one of the russians
many successes in the 20th century they
put it into an indian a small indian
newspaper which i think they funded or
fronted it was a little english language
thing in india that's where the story
started and then other newspapers
reported and that's the source and now
other newspapers report these other
newspapers which are more credible and
before you know it
around the world there's this idea that
aids was an american conspiracy
but how many people read that indian
newspaper
probably seven or seventy whatever so
you might say you know look the russians
put like only 70 people saw it so come
on it doesn't doesn't mean anything um
so
given the given the incredible virality
of modern social media the fact that
only a small number of extremists are
directly exposed to the russian
uh fake information is not the end of
the story
when you trace out how stories flow and
what happens then they can have a big
impact and the fact that the fact that
we now live in a world in which any
random kid
some 18 year old in upstate new york or
in texas
can be motivated by things they read on
an extremist site to go shoot up the
black supermarket
yeah very few people go to those sites
but those that do can have a huge impact
so again i think
it's important to know that the russian
the the direct russian posts don't
literally reach lots and lots of
americans but it doesn't mean they're
not having an impact the the big finding
you know the failure to find russian
collusion just means trump wasn't
working with the russians i do believe
that uh but they have been trying since
the 50s and even the 20s to do exactly
what social media is doing they have
been trying to make us believe that
america is a deeply racist anti-semitic
country and
uh you know i i think um
uh so i
and that's just the russians now the
chinese have much more focused interests
uh of course they uh they want us to
think well of china they want to
suppress anyone who criticizes china uh
and they're probably in the long run a
lot more competent uh and capable and
persistent than the russians
so i think it'd be naive to conclude
that there's not a major national
security risk yeah the risk is there the
question is have the platform's done a
good enough job at handling this because
after the blow up with the internet
research agency like the ability to
message the ability to buy ads in the
political campaign is far more
restricted than it has been although i
did read this story yeah there was a
story recently that mark zuckerberg
doesn't seem to care about this as much
as he does
virtual reality so
yeah i read um i read an ugly truth that
biography of facebook i forget the name
of the authors
yes celia king yes yeah thank you so i
read that and that covers that in great
detail and so if you imagine if you
imagine a major arm of russian
intelligence that is devoted to this
full-time with a lot of funding
and then you have this one office in
facebook uh headed by a guy who seems
you know very uh i i forget his name but
you know whatever the head of security
was he seems to be working very hard and
he's got a bunch of employees
he's gone now though that's it yeah okay
he works right
so it's kind of comical and sad if you
see this dedicated branch of the russian
military and up again and there the
defense is this guy and you know you
know a few dozen what maybe it's 100 i
don't know how many people he has but
they're working on lots of problems and
this is not their top priority
so no i i um
you know yes of course they they took
some easy steps but there is no way they
can get a handle on this this has to be
and i think they call it this has to be
a sort of a government-wide partnership
between
coordinated between the cia the fbi nsa
facebook google they all have to be
working together as far as i know
they're not at least they're not working
in a coordinated way right but the
question underlying a lot of this is
whose responsibility is it is it the
platform's responsibility or is it our
responsibility and i think that are like
citizens just a citizen's responsibility
to not get hacked by the chinese and
russians no i'm talking about like the
the broader discussion that we're having
obviously like you know
well we we can
we can practice good and opsec you know
but we're
kind of powerless when it comes to going
up you and i against china or russia but
i'm talking about this broad discussion
of the yields of social media what is
turning our society into
oftentimes this discussion leaves out
the fact that you know there's a supply
and a demand problem that you know there
are people who are responding to these
incentives and pushing it as well
i'm i'm curious from your perspective
when you think about the problems with
social media i mean how much of this is
on us to look inward and engage in
healthier behaviors i mean it's kind of
interesting even looking at it in
contrast with the coddling of american
mind where it's like
this is something that we are doing
versus this is something that social
media platforms are doing to us i know
social media was part of your your book
but i'm curious how you think about the
balance
yeah
so so in the social sciences we talk a
lot about like the prisoner's dilemma
commons dilemmas there are all kinds of
situations that you can engineer
in which each person pursuing their
self-interest
ends up that the group is much worse off
than than otherwise and so you know the
prisoners dilemma you know if two
prisoners committed a crime together and
if they they're caught and if they both
agree to keep quiet then the da can't
get them on major charges but the da
says to each one if you turn evidence
against the other one i'll go easy on
you but if they both turn evidence then
you're both screwed
um and so it's very hard to get out of a
prisoner's limit now commons dilemma is
a prisoner's dilemma generalized to n
people and can be a million it can be
seven whatever
so the clearest case is instagram for 10
year olds um so no parent wants their 10
or 11 year old on instagram but yet
sixth graders in my experience both my
kids when they started sixth grade in
new york city public schools they said
dad everyone's on instagram can i have
an account now how did that happen
well it's a comments dilemma um each kid
says to his mother
mom
um everyone's on instagram i need to be
on instagram now none of us want the
kids on instagram but we don't want our
kid cut off
so this is a trap that they've set for
us and they know about and um
and they won't do anything about it
because if they do if they do keep kids
off below 13 then the kids will just go
to tick tock so you know i understand
why instagram doesn't do much about
underage use
but it's a trap and so uh no i don't put
this on the parents or on the kids uh
the platforms have set a trap all most
of the kids are falling into it with
disastrous results for their mental
health this is on the platforms and the
platforms because of the competition
between platforms can't solve it
so the way the classic way that
economists tell us to solve these
dilemmas is with government regulation
so i'm a big fan um senator bennett of
colorado has a bill uh to actually have
a new regulator of social media
when radio and television came in the
20th century we had no way of dealing
with them and so we created new agencies
the fcc for example um we had to have a
new government regulator that had
expertise and had some abil and
jurisdiction to do something about radio
and television
and i think the same thing is happening
now there is no government agency that
has jurisdiction over social media it
doesn't go out over the airwaves so it's
not fcc
uh there's anti-trust issues that can be
regulated but that's a small part of the
problem so bennett's bill would actually
create a regulator that could understand
these traps and recommend ways out
um so until we have and as long as
people are in a trap like that i don't
put any blame on the people
um i'm very reluctant to tell adults
what to do if they're not being tricked
but i'm very reluctant to have the
companies telling my children or at
least luring my children into traps
without my knowledge or ability to stop
it
so i do think we need government
regulation here right and that's
children mental health but we talk about
the degradation of democracy like here's
another study that i think professor
brendan nyan had
where he said he found that um this is
from the how harmful is social media
it's a story in a new yorker uh he he
said he found that
almost all extremist content is either
consumed by subscribers to the relevant
channels or encountered via links from
external sites now of course we
understand that the folks who are
extremists like uh you know
they are the ones that are like
committing lots of the crimes like you
mentioned earlier in the show however
like you know again like is that a
social media problem or is that an
extremist problem
well it's
so there are always extremists they're
always conspiracy theorists they're
always people who
are so motivated by their political
values that they want to kill other
people
and social media makes it easier for
them to find each other so you know i
divide things up into like the growing
pains of any new technology
and
the the harms that are
um not
necessary or the harms that um
that are
are
things we really need to focus on so
so put it this way um
the internet it's so important to always
distinguish between the internet and
social media
so the internet uh is the greatest boon
to mankind since electricity or fire i'm
not sure which
and of course the internet makes
possible all sorts of bad things as well
those i consider to be growing pains um
when automobiles came out a lot of
people got killed uh but we gradually
got better regulation of automobiles and
now the death rate is you know way lower
than it was even 30 years ago
um and the same thing is going to happen
with the internet um
so if it's you know the issue of
extremists finding each other that is
intrinsic to the internet and especially
as things get encrypted there's no way
to stop that um but at the same time
there are
there are tools there are things that
really really help extremists for no
good reason
and facebook and other platforms their
unwillingness to
verify people or vet them their
willingness to allow anyone to create
hundreds of fake accounts and use them
however they want
um that's really unnecessary now i say
however they want obviously if you make
death threats you'll get shut down but
you just open another account
so i think that um the original idea
let's just let everybody connect with
everybody let everybody it'll be great
it'll be like john lennon you know
imagine there's no distinctions no walls
no nations well that's working out
really really badly so badly in fact
that i think that american democracy is
likely to fail catastrophically uh at
some point in the next decade or two
decades it's very hard to predict the
future but
um but i i think we are the way we're
headed is a very very bad direction um
and so i think we have to revisit these
original libertarian and progressive
assumptions about if we just let
everybody you know
everybody online to do whatever they
want unverified fake name it's gonna be
great okay and you know this is a show
where we like to talk about solutions
not just the problems so i'm glad you've
gave us this beautiful segway into the
solutions part of it um one of the
things that you bring up in your piece
is authenticating
people so you can't just be anonymous
now
i brought this up recently and i kind of
got
hammered over it i think it's a good
idea
and i guess that's sort of this is going
to prove your point but the counter
argument to this is that
if you do have to authenticate people
then you're going to end up with a lot
less activists
you'll end up with authoritarian
governments demanding that data i
actually wrote another story the same
year as the retweet story about how
two gentlemen with ties to saudi arabia
worked for twitter and ended up passing
along information to an organization
close to crown prince mohammed bin
salman saudi arabia
so you do run that risk if you're ending
up tying every every account to a
phone number or a license uh you know
whether
you know whether uh that's public or not
so what's your thought about that
sure so um so first thank you you're one
of the first interviewers who has
understood that authentication does not
mean using your real name in public so
um so if you go to if if if listeners go
to the google doc and go to section 11.2
user authentication
we lay out how there are there are five
different levels of authentication
level zero is nothing that's what we
have now not anyone can do anything as
much as they want
level one is what elon musk tweeted
authenticate humans you just have to
prove you're a human you have to pass a
hard captcha before you can start an
account so that's at least something
that would cut down on the bots
um
level two is authenticate unique
identity once and untraceably
and this would solve the problem you're
talking about you just have to prove
that you're a person once and then
whatever this third-party authentication
thing is passes back to facebook or
twitter or whatever like yes this is a
real person um and maybe there may you
know what i'd like to see is this is a
real person and they're over 18 and
they're in a particular country but
there's no record kept of it just that
they passed this check
so now there's nothing you know even if
that thing got hacked all it would be is
yeah there's a person but you know i
mean
it's easy to tell that john height is a
person and in america like there's no
big secret there so
um
so level two uh authentication would be
so much better than what we have now and
we have examples here humanid.org and
world coin so there are multiple look
the tech industry is brilliant uh they
come up with a lot of different ways to
solve these problems and so humanity.org
and world coin those are two that would
work for level two authentication
um
now level three authentication is what
you're talking what you're concerned
about this is where you have
authentication by a third party who
keeps the information
and so that i understand could cause
problems and so i'm not i'm suggesting
that we look into this i'm not saying
that the federal government should
mandate level three for any platform
that gets section 230 protection but i
would like us to consider that the
federal government
mandate that if you want the benefit of
level of you want the benefit of section
230 protection and this incredible
freedom from lawsuits that only you and
the gun lobby you have because of
lobbying if you want that you have some
minimal responsibilities to keep off
bots russian agents and children
um and so i think level two
authentication wouldn't solve the
problem but it would make it a lot
better what do you think about that
i like that i think that's actually a
much more nuanced solution
for saying you liked it but thank you no
i think it's look i i
it's crazy sometime to be talking about
social media i'm sure you know um
if you're in the process of inquiry just
trying to figure things out you can have
the mob come after you um as you know i
have and i'm sure you have as well but
hey if we don't have these conversations
then you know we're not going to end up
in a good place so i'm glad we're doing
it i think that's a good point
thank you yeah all right let's talk
about one last thing before we go which
is virality uh you know it i you may or
may not have mentioned this in your
story but um you obviously cited the
retweet story
for i mean folks can go and read i'll
drop it in the show notes but like my
thought has always been
at a certain point you got to make
people copy and paste the links as
opposed to just hitting retweet that
will create much more thoughtfulness
it's surprising to me that this hasn't
caught on at all um after having read
the story and written about this dart
throwing that you mentioned in your
story what's your view on virality how
how do you think it needs to be changed
if at all
to uh bring this stupid a little bit
yeah
i mean virality yeah so virality is the
you know is what um is what brought down
the tower of babel is my argument
um that you know social media wasn't the
whole problem a lot of the polarization
problem predates social predates social
media
but the ability of anything to go viral
at any moment means that people are
walking on eggshells even seventh
graders are walking on eggshells because
any little thing they say could blow up
within their school or beyond their
school so morality is the problem
and so my one thought about that
because yeah i agree with you i mean it
would be great if we put friction in
make people copy and paste but in a
competitive marketplace if customers
don't like that they'll go to a market
that
uh you know that doesn't require those
hassles but i like to think about it
this way that present
on some platforms particularly twitter
um the more of a jerk you are
the more successful you are now that i
mean obviously in some sub subsets
that's not true in some sense as it is
but
um but the but the the hyper virality of
twitter shapes and you can see people
losing their minds and i can see
professors who
used to be reasonable people they get
trained in almost a behaviorist
reinforcement mechanism they turn into
jerks
well that's because twitter incentivizes
being a jerk in order to go viral
what i'd like to see is an alternate
platform
um compete with twitter in which the
incentive is to not be a jerk the
incentive is to be productive
um and at that point i you know then
maybe like all the you know there still
would be you know i'm not gonna like we
can't put it out of business but um the
only people on left on twitter would be
like watching you know wrestle
what is it professional wrestling that
people want to watch professional
wrestling can go to twitter but people
want to keep up with the news could then
move to this alternate
you know the anti-twitter site
and one way to do that explore this idea
on the big tech podcast and i hope
people know better will tell me
um uh one idea which i talked over with
reed hoffman and he seemed to think has
had some promise um is what if you had
multiple ways of coding
users not individual tweets let's say
but you code individual users for how
much they are troll-ish or troll-like so
people who just they just attack a lot
there's a lot of obscenity there's no
depth no complexity no nuance they're
trolls
um so suppose you have ai rate this you
have crowdsourcing rate this and you
have experts rates you have three
different ways to do this and you can
you know play them off each other to
figure out anyway the point is you can
get a rating of trollishness
and suppose everybody gets a
trollishness rating from one to five
and when you sign up for twitter you
have a switch you have a switch set at
four which means you will see everybody
who's four and below
but if someone's a five you don't see
them and they don't see you this is very
important they don't get to see my
tweets because they disappear why should
such people be in the public square if
twitter is essentially the public square
we shouldn't have people who are just
stabbing people and shooting people and
urinating on people like they don't
belong in the public square they're
nuisances
so some people might lower it from a
four to a three or a two and if we did
that then the incentive would be to not
be a total
um that's what i'd like to see that's
that's the way that i think we could uh
we could create much better environments
for for that social media could be a
much more constructive part of our
democratic deliberation because right
now it's i think it's really bad for
democratic deliberation yeah i agree
with that um i i think it's kind of
tough to figure out exactly what
trolling behavior is so much of this the
one of the biggest problems with social
media is so much of it is in the gray
like uh i even wrote a tweet this
weekend about how i liked yellow cabs
and how people might want to give them a
shot outside of uber and uh you know
it's kind of like oh it was a joke it
was part critique of the you know
messianic verse visions of these tech
companies
partly a troll so anyway uh but i think
it's it's a good it's a good inclination
it we there's got to be a way to improve
what we're seeing right now because the
things that we've talked about the fact
that the extremes are controlling these
platforms that it's just a home for
outrage and trolling that and and people
can probably uh you know feel this for
sure but when you go on twitter you
almost always end up leaving feeling
worse there's got to be solutions to
this stuff that's right yeah so i'd like
to end i know we're just about out of
time so let me just end you know i'm so
pessimistic but but here's my optimistic
vision um if we go back to the late 90s
early 20s early 2000s you know we all
thought that social media the internet
first and then social media was giving
an incredible boon to democracy and of
course it can be
um
and if we think about all the range of
possibilities that there are if you
think about almost like a complex
dynamical system with a complex
topography it's all these different
states
there is there is a configuration
somewhere in the future in which
technology gives us the best democracy
that has ever been that is possible i
believe i don't know if i'll get there
in 10 years or in 50 years i don't think
we'll be there in five years
but there is a future in which
technology gives us the best democracy
the best discussions the best society
that is imaginable now the obstacles
from here to there we don't know how
high the the hill is or the mountain we
don't know if we can get there um but
that's my hope that the tech community
which is so creative and so brilliant
that's my hope that more of them will
put their minds
to that long-term vision of how can tech
give give us the best democracy it has
ever been rather than what might happen
is um uh
pulling the rug out from under us and
having american democracy collapse yeah
i hope so too and i can say that you
know speaking with the listeners uh to
this show the people who read big
technology the folks at the tech
companies
that i speak with there's a lot of
positive intent and one of the things i
try to remind people who listen or read
is that
we're really in the early innings here i
mean facebook's 20 years old um the
internet's gonna be with us for a long
time but i like like you mentioned i
hope we go in in
in the good direction versus the bad and
um i'm optimistic too i think we'll get
there it's just this is the you know
what what happened after the printing
press right thirty years war yeah so are
we in that uh every year's war i think i
can't remember which right which but
it's yeah it's gonna be like maybe more
than 30 years yeah are we in there or
well the nice thing about technology is
the cycles move faster so hopefully
that's the optimistic note we leave on
is that the cycle moves faster professor
thanks so much for joining us do you can
you want to shout out that url that
people can go to one more time just so
uh they're able to peruse and read all
the stuff yes all of my writings uh my
uh my google docs all of that is
available at jonathan height that's
haidt
dot com slash social media
okay great well professor jonathan hi
thank you so much for joining us here on
big technology podcast
thank you alex thanks everybody for
listening thank you nick watney for
turning the audio around doing the
editing making this sound great
appreciate you thank you linkedin for
having me as part of your podcast
network and thanks to all of you the
listeners appreciate you coming back
week after week stay tuned next week
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