Spinning The Web
Armon Owlia: Coming up on “This American Divide…”
Sharon McMahon: You get fed more information that they, that the algorithm believes you're interested in.
Owlia: The more users there are, the more data is given. The more we engage leads to something disconcerting.
Gabriel Sterling: As soon as she was done, she left.
Owlia: Social media doesn't begin as something evil. So what happened?
Mark Zuckerberg: Who knows where we’re going next?
Owlia: Do you like what you see?
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Michael Smerconish: Is social media harmful? That’s the question being raised and debated.
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Joe Fryer: We’ve got families all over the country who are dealing with this.
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Tom Costello: As anti-Semitic content has surged on Twitter after Elon Musk, who emphasized free speech, took full control. Use of the N-word also jumped 500 percent.
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Jo Ling Kent: After close reviews of the President’s recent tweets, it banned him, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
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President Joe Biden: It was an enraged mob that had been whipped up into a frenzy.
Alisyn Camerota: The alleged attacker posted conspiracy theories on Facebook.
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Brian Latimer: The social media business is evolving a lot these days.
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Alisyn Camerota: “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland announcing he’s taking a break from social media for the sake of his mental health.
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Jake Tapper: Cherished ideals of free speech are in the hands of erratic billionaires.
Owlia: It’s time to examine “This American Divide.”
Owlia: I find there’s something funny about change: often, you don't know where it’ll come from. Sure, you can guess, but you’ll never know until it happens. Our episode begins with such a moment; with a click of keys, and a website launch that would, ultimately, change the world forever. February 4, 2004– that now-infamous Kirkland House at Harvard University, where a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launches what's then known as "TheFacebook.com." It starts as the answer to a long-time demand– Harvard does not have a universal face book, or directory, that can connect its students. Its original manifesto, plastered on their front page, read, “Thefacebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges. We have opened up Thefacebook for popular consumption at Harvard University. You can use Thefacebook to search for people at your school, find out who are in your classes, look up your friends' friends, and see a visualization of your social network.” When TheFacebook began, it was exclusive by design. You needed to be a college student, specifically a Harvard student with a "Harvard.edu" email address. How many people fit the bill? About 20,000 students at the time. However, it grows and becomes the hot ticket on campus. Exclusivity and a simple concept are enough to bring people to the party. Facebook’s creator and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in a 2004 CNBC interview.
Mark Zuckerberg: When we first launched, we were hoping for 400, 500 people. Harvard didn’t have a face book, so, that’s the gap that we were trying to fill and, now, we’re at 100 thousand people, so, who knows where we’re going next?
Owlia: Similar stories happen with other platforms. Look at Instagram and Twitter, for example. Instagram was a backlash against traditional social media that focused on words by using pictures as the primary way to get the point across. Twitter begins with a simple challenge, "Tell us what you're doing right now in 140 characters." So, social media doesn't begin as something evil. In fact, it starts as something very fun and innocent. So what happened? Many things. First, like many novel concepts that start small, social media could only go one way. As more people heard about it and wanted it, social media companies had increased incentive to expand and evolve. And with more growth, comes more money. Who wouldn’t want more money in their pockets? Additionally, in the last episode, we went a bit into political history, ending on what's known as the Southern Strategy. The Strategy focused on establishing the Republican Party's base, which leaned heavily into anti-left, pro-segregationist rhetoric that won over a Solid South that had long been in the Democratic camp. The only problem was that what they were saying wasn't true…and they knew it. They saw an opportunity and took it, and in the process, began to fracture and divide the country to where we see it today. It's not a stretch to say such a strategy still happens; to find out how it continues, we need to dive into the metaphorical toolbox. We won’t have to dive far. Funnily enough, the same tool ordinarily exploited by politicians is the same one used by social media companies to keep people at the party, bring more people to it, and, consequentially, keep making money. So, how does this happen? Simple. Ensure customers like the content so much they don’t want to leave. But even then, that's tough. No two people will enjoy the same thing, and for a platform with literally hundreds of millions of users, tailoring a utopic experience would be a very tall order. That is, for a human. And so, Facebook in 2009, launched the infamous algorithm with so much success that practically every platform would copy them. It would ultimately become the backbone of what made social media so ever-present. This has led to consistent growth since then, with the estimated number of social media users rising from 37 percent of the U.S. population to now 72.
Sharon McMahon: I’m Sharon McMahon. I’m a Jefferson Award winner for Outstanding Public Service By A Private Citizen. I’ve been in a variety of publications, news outlets, you know, that sort of thing.
Owlia: McMahon, also known as "America's Government Teacher," has combated against misinformation through her podcast, "Sharon Says So."
McMahon: You can see now who likes a post or who comments on a post. And so we are able to much more easily evaluate the political beliefs of our friends and neighbors than we used to be, where it was much more close to the vest, unless you were out there involved in the political arena.
Owlia: However, the more users there are, the more data is given. The more we engage leads to something disconcerting.
McMahon: You get fed more information that they, that the algorithm believes you're interested in. So, it increases these sort of silos of, you know, or echo chambers, if you will. That leads us to believe, you know, a certain viewpoint and that this is the correct viewpoint because we're constantly surrounding ourselves with only that viewpoint; it becomes difficult to see what other people are thinking.
Owlia: When such echo chambers are present, it becomes clearer who exactly needs to be targeted and reached to gain power. Parties and politics, historically, have been based on such targeting: specifically, the optics of how to get a group of particular people to mobilize support for a candidate or vote for a candidate or political position. Even in the days of common decency, you could still take potshots at your opponent while appearing respectful.
John McCain: First of all, I want to be President of the United States, and obviously, I do not want Senator Obama to be. But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States.
Barack Obama: Let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and respect.
Owlia: Those were the voices of the late Senator John McCain and then-Senator, now-former President Barack Obama, respectively, on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. What that would accomplish was making your opponent look bad and making yourself look good in the eyes of the general electorate. However, social media takes it a step further. Remember that, in the beginning, the purpose was not to talk about politics or be controversial. It was simply a way to connect. There are no foundations for political discourse, such as a fact-checking system. Put such a tool into the hands of people, however, who are professional spinners and have no one to correct them?
Owlia (in discussion with McMahon): What do you think of the way that politicians use social media?
McMahon: Some of them are really great at it and they use it for educational purposes. I can think of a couple of examples of people who are great at it. Most of them are not. Most of them, especially at the congressional level, use it to create viral burns. You know, sort of like, ‘I'm going to, I'm going to say something that is really controversial. It's going to get a ton of eyeballs on it because that moment is going to go viral. And I am then, as a result, going to fill my coffers with donations from people who like what I have to say.’ So, they are very disincentivized from crossing that political divide and entirely incentivized to stay on their own side, and, in fact, to create those viral moments that they know will help them raise money. You don't raise money by being like, "You know what? Sometimes Democrats have good ideas," if you're a Republican or vice versa. "Sometimes I like what these people have to say." That doesn't equal “cha-ching,” right?
Owlia: For example, Marjorie Taylor Greene arguing with fellow Republican Gabriel Sterling, not just an election official in her home state of Georgia, but the Chief Operating Officer in the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State. In other words, someone with much expertise about the validity of a Georgia election. In a video published on Greene's Twitter on February 28, 2023, she states…
Marjorie Taylor Greene: And then, and then the other thing is you have constantly shilled for this election and I'm going to tell you, it's - there was blatant, outright fraud in the 2020 election.
Owlia: The next day, Sterling would appear on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” giving his own side of the story.
Gabriel Sterling: Well, it's interesting because we had started the meeting. She came in late. She purposely sat next to me because she wanted to get her social media hits. And then as soon as she was done, she left.
Owlia: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seen by 47 percent of Democrats as very favorable according to a poll by The Economist and YouGov, also uses this technique, not just creating misinformation on political policy, but, like Greene, advancing her own agenda through social media.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Does my existence make you mad? Does the fact that, yes, I am a mouthpiece for the people of New York’s 14th Congressional District upset you? Well, I have help for you…
Owlia: Both Greene and AOC are not the only ones who use this practice. People on both sides of the aisle, whether politicians, influencers, or average joes, participate in such behavior to garner supporters or followers, generate donations, and build up their own profiles as heroes and beloved figures not only in their parties but by the media so the cycle can repeat. They are also aided by the aforementioned algorithm, with such posts more often trending than other, seemingly less-interesting information, otherwise known as the facts. According to an MIT study, it’s estimated that posts with misinformation are pushed by the algorithms six times more than those with facts or the truth. Additionally, there is a fallacy that, over time, has proven to be an universal quote-unquote truth: "If a piece of information is on the internet, it has to be true." When Dr. Hak-Shing William Tam, then the head of the Traditional Family Coalition, was testifying in favor of Proposition 8 in California, he argued that legalizing gay marriage would lead to legalizing pedophilia and polygamy, as he claimed it had happened already in the Netherlands. It was not, by the way. Then or now. When asked where he got his information, Tam stated: "It's in the internet." False information lives with the truth online, and when using common sense, is easy to spot. However, when spoken by a public figure and, even more importantly, a beloved and trusted public figure in their own community, the danger of the creation and spread of misinformation and innuendo escalates.
McMahon: Where the television reporter would have to, you know, if somebody is giving their opinion, they'd have to say, "But that's your opinion." You know, like, they would have to potentially couch what somebody is saying as an opinion and not a fact, or they can face, you know, lawsuits. And there are media companies that are being faced with huge lawsuits right now because they allowed people on the air presented information as facts that was not it, not fact. So, some of the dangers are, you know, one of the things that is true of social media is that news has become fragmented.
Owlia: The fact, too, that it's the broadest and most efficient tool for any politician or person on so many levels, in particular when a vast majority of Americans from all walks of life use it, does not benefit the consumer. When you give a public figure, particularly a well-beloved and trusted public figure, the ability to say whatever they want with no restrictions or consequences, social media becomes the "Wild, Wild West." Ultimately, the tools serve their purpose, as QAnon survivor Ceally Smith can attest.
Owlia (in conversation with Ceally Smith): So, do you feel like you were spending more of your time on social media as time was going on?
Ceally Smith: Yes.
Owlia (in conversation with Smith): Could you elaborate on that?
Smith: Just as someone that likes to research a lot and also likes to find information and collect my own data. I did, in fact, spend more time on social media and the Internet, collecting information and conversing.
Owlia: When they lead, people follow. More often than not, however, people follow blindly without determining whether what’s being said is true or spun. Once again, Sharon McMahon.
McMahon: The legacy media is having trouble keeping up with how most people are now getting their news and information from social media. And what has happened is people then attach themselves emotionally to people that they trust and like and I'm very familiar with this because people tell me this all the time, like, “Sharon, I trust you. If you say that it's happening, then I believe you,” or, “if you say not to worry about it, then I believe you…” So, when you place your trust in an individual who then begins to abuse your trust, it is very difficult to believe that they are abusing your trust. It can be very difficult to disavow yourself of the notion that this person is, is good and believable and has your best interest at heart. We've seen this happen multiple times in the United States where somebody was trusted by the masses, when, in fact, they were lying to people. They were saying one thing, but they knew it was not true. So, therein lies some of the challenges, is that you then have, potentially, millions of people believing lies and then acting on those lies. So, and those acting on those lies can have a huge variety of consequences that range from, you know, just ruining your own familial relationships all the way to crime and, and potentially death from believing lies perpetuated on social media.
Owlia: The Southern Strategy on steroids. All they have to do is craft their message, pick their targets, discredit the other side, and let technology do the rest. Lather, rinse, repeat. For the most part, people are not in control. The politicians, influencers, and social media companies control the narrative, take the money, and because of the overall sense of comfort in social media, people choose to not leave the echo chamber, and thus, the cycle continues, fracturing and dividing the country even further and allowing for increased violence and division. How do we set the record straight and see the other side? Why don't we show a bit of confidence in those who do set the record straight? Extra, extra, hear all about it.
