Thread by @WillOremus

This is provocative, erudite, historically informed, and worth reading for anyone who thinks about "disinfo."

I think it's also deeply unsatisfying and I have a couple of specific critiques. But the questions it raises are ones that deserve raising. harpers.org/archive/2021/0…

Off the bat, @Bernstein absolutely nails the unspoken, unexamined assumptions of a lot of the less-sophisticated hand-wringing over our "broken" modern information sphere. It has never not been broken. harpers.org/archive/2021/0…

This is perceptive on a sort of symbiosis between Facebook and its loudest critics: Both rely on the premise that social media is an effective persuasion machine. Is it really? (This piece hints at "no," though I think the boring true answer is "it depends / hard to say.")

One somewhat minor gripe is that @Bernstein repeatedly conflates content policy with "the algorithm." I know these references to "the algorithm" are winking/ironical, but there's a real distinction between amplification and moderation, and this analysis kind of blows past it.

@Bernstein Some of the best punches @Bernstein lands are against the conveniently naive assumption that "misinfo" is something that we can feasibly define, identify, and root out, if we just look in the right places, chastise the right tech execs, and twiddle the right knobs.

@Bernstein But this is where I think it's crucial to distinguish between what social media *amplifies* or *incentivizes* vs. what it simply *makes visible* or *allows.* You don't have to be a techno-determinist to see that FB/Twitter/YT don't just passively host content. They also shape it.

There's an ungenerous reading of @Bernstein's piece in which its own unspoken premise is something like, "What if platforms really are neutral after all? What if they really are just a mirror to society?" Obv that's not what he's saying, but I think it risks that misreading.

A veteran journalist once taught me always to consider the "null hypothesis"--that what looks like a shiny new trend or causal relationship might be illusory, an artifact of some cognitive or epistemic bias. I think @Bernstein rightly holds up that lens to the disinfo field.

Ultimately I hope this @Bernstein piece serves to puncture some of the lazier, more puffed-up proclamations about social media and misinfo--but doesn't dissuade critics from continuing to probe the specific ways that modern platforms mold and influence the way we all communicate.