Collin G Brooke

The platforms’ business model is dependent on the volume and velocity of the inflammatory content being offered. It is not a side issue. It is the driving metric. The more engaging the content, the more eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more advertising revenue.

But it is different in that ideas have weight. They have momentum. Once an idea starts, it spreads and grows and gets heavier and heavier until it can’t be resisted, even by the Divine.

As a result, the news and information ecosystem that is so important to a functioning democracy and civil society has suffered a double whammy. First, as we have seen, the social media platforms’ recommendation engines have promoted misinformation and disinformation. Second, we have now seen how programmatic advertising has provided financial suppo

the imaginary waxes while the symbolic wanes.

scale requires technological adjuncts, because scale is only produced when we move beyond the perceptual limits of the human body.

Conspiracy theories, as we have seen, are both symptoms of confusion and powerlessness and tools of division and distraction that benefit elites.

people who use social media frequently perceive significantly more political disagreement in their daily lives than those who do not.

That growing alienation is a key point. This is not just about “bad” people. It is about how the death of truth, and, therefore trust, has caused so many “normal” people to be derailed into acting badly by predators or by people who have themselves been deluded. And it’s about the new tools that technology has given them to spread distrust.

This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what’s true, then we can’t navigate out of any of our problems.”