Thread by @davidhogg111

The hate used to keep us engaged, outraged and consuming advertisements has become one of- if not the most profitable commodities ever.

If we want our Republic to survive- we need to regulate the outrage industrial complex of social media companies that has developed.

We now live in a completely different communications landscape than ever before in human history.

Instead of mainly relying on experts and journalists locally as we have for centuries we now rely on a democratized, global, system of retributive justice to inform our citizens.

If we want to give future generations a fighting chance we must do everything we can to combat adversarial disinformation on social media and the algorithms that make trillions of our hate and division as a country.

Social media is an incredible tool but like all tools- it’s also a weapon that can and is being used against us both by our adversaries and by us

All while doing everything we can to protect our right to freedom of speech.

Think about how useful social media is if your Putin.

You have a stagnant GDP, a declining population and you need your enemies (NATO, The US, etc) to be divided which you know you can’t do militarily. So you fund active measures campaigns to make your enemy do you work for you

It’s a lot cheaper monetarily and less costly (politically speaking) to have your Internet Research Agency make disinformation in comparison to posing a more overt adversarial threat that would unite us- if they were to go back to Cold War era militarism (that they can’t afford)

After all who needs to go to war when you can get your enemies to do so for you because- they have more guns than people and just enough foolish people to use them?

I have no idea what our government or the intel agencies are doing to counter this threat but it’s clearly not enough.

Considering less than a year ago we had a literal attempted insurrection- of which one of the prime causes was disinformation.

I can not overstate how much of a threat I personally think the democratization of disinformation is to our republic.

Think I’m a liberal that has no idea what I’m talking about all you want

Read it for yourself in the 2021 DNI threat assessment page 11

The classes where I’ve learned about this intel stuff and threat assessment have been really helpful. I love digging into this social media- information warfare stuff because it’s such a new field there’s a massive amount to discover / learn and it’s clearly important.

Lastly I cannot think of one thing that could make it infinitely harder for us to address all of our current threats to our republic.

Disinformation has the potential to stop us from addressing foreign interference, climate change, pandemics and much more.

Disinformation is the greatest threat to our national security because it makes all other threats 100x harder to address.

It’s already killed over 100,000 Americans this year from people not getting vaccinated.

If that and the insurrection aren’t warning signs idk what is.

If we don’t get people elected to Congress that understand the threat these issues pose or can’t understand how they work (despite literally having some of the most powerful intel agencies in the world at their disposal) our republic is in some of the greatest danger in our hist.

If we don’t address the threat of disinformation it’s not a matter of if our republic will collapse- but how.

Disinformation and populism is democracy’s kryptonite.

Unregulated Social media has created an enormously profitable explosion in both.

I know I said this previously but I want to re-emphasize the importance of how crucial it is that when we have conversations about this to talk about and work to protect our freedom of speech.

I said populism and what I forgot to add to that was *authoritarian* populism and polarization

More info on what I mean:
Polarization versus Democracy Milan W. Svolik- Journal of Democracy, Volume 30, Number 3, July 2019, pp. 20-32 (Article)

journalofdemocracy.org/articles/polar…

Let me BE EXPLICITLY clear what I am NOT advocating for is the government being able to regulate what anyone says on social media. Nor am I advocating for the abolishment of for profit media.

What I am advocating is social media that is not so prone to feeding into peoples confirmation bias only showing us content that we agree with and attempting to make it more balanced. Disinformation takes advantage of our confirmation bias no matter our ideology.

I also would advocate for people much more qualified than I am to discuss how we protect freedom of speech while reducing the domination of disinformation and offer solutions. Idk maybe like the 535 people In the house and senate we pay six figures to deal with stuff like this

I’d also say Donald Trump being removed from twitter is no more a violation of his freedom of speech than it would be for the New York Times to refuse to publish an op-ed by Trump.

He can use other platforms there’s no part of the government saying he can’t speak.

I’m sorry for how out of order this thread is- in case you couldn’t tell it was very impromptu. If I could I would edit and rearrange I would. But I can’t haha.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1445320…

Reading this- I am realizing how much I’ve learned and how much better my writing has gotten.

I have much further to grow intellectually and as a writter. But nonetheless- it’s nice to see personal growth made possible by my amazing classmates and professors 🙂

As someone who’s struggled with dyslexia and ADHD by entire life this improvement, even if small, means a lot to me.

Thank you all for your complements and thoughts on this subject of this thread (or essay I guess?)