Thread by @davetroy

1/Disinformation is the operational end of a process designed to break down society and radicalize it into cultish forms. This process leads people away from truth.

We can’t address this process by distributing truth; the cure for disinfo is not simply truth.

2/Instead, we need to counter the “lytic” process of breakdown with a different process that pulls people into common cause. That’s very hard to do but we know that just “distributing truth” won’t work. Truth is, rather, a goal we must arrive at.

3/This is why “Cambridge Analytica, but for truth” is so wrongheaded, and why the breakdown process is so diabolical.

We can’t fix society any easier than we can un-stir coffee, or un-burn a fire.

Fixing this requires different thinking than that which got us here.

4/Unfortunately, we will likely have to address the “breakdown” with a new, synthetic approach to rebuilding social capital and trust, from scratch. That’s doable, and I have ideas.

But it will be like new growth in a forest after a fire. The old forest is, sadly, gone for good.

5/We need to turn our attention to what is being lost: social ties, social trust, social capital — choose your term, but that is the hidden thread that binds us all together and it is what has been burned away these last few years.

6/And, what about truth? An artifact of our shared reality, and now the loss of it. Raining down water on a burned forest is, well, not going to change anything.

We must instead lay the groundwork to rebuilding social ties. And that may take generations.

7/Only when sufficient social fabric is re-established does truth once again have a shot at thriving. So, let’s mourn our loss and set about the work of rebuilding, while curbing the fires that still rage. And that’s a matter of shutting down the infrastructure fueling the fire.

8/We don’t look enough at the relationship between identity, in-group, and belief. They are all reflections of the same thing and you can’t alter one without altering the others. This is why injecting garbage breaks down social ties and alters belief and identity.

9/Sufficiently radicalized, people won’t recover their prior social connections, leaving them stranded on “islands of dissensus.” There is no natural pathway back from this. It’s a one way process. Throwing truth at them doesn’t restore lost social/family ties; it alienates them.

10/So we must instead find new strategies that meet people where they are and start to rebuild social connections. That’s very hard, very expensive. That’s why disinfo and social breakdown is perhaps the most effective weapon in an asymmetric hybrid war like the one we are in.

11/And to be clear: I’m not suggesting that we not assert and share truth wherever and however we can. That’s table stakes; bedrock. But it is a necessary vs. sufficient condition for dealing with the actual societal effects of disinformation.

12/People working in this field or wishing to learn more about this set of ideas are welcome to DM me for more info. I have a draft of a paper I’ve been working on that outlines this all in more detail. Thanks for the interest.

13/A corollary here is that every platform design and every intervention must be evaluated in terms of whether it harms or promotes healthy social ties, or diminishes/creates unhealthy social ties.

We are not talking about this, and we should be.