The challenge for the liberal establishment in the social media era is simple: persuade or perish. If you can’t control the public conversation, you must participate in it.
Absolute tour de force. This one needs to get into the New York Times and should get you an interview on Ezra Klein’s show.
I am a small-L liberal (though also a large-L Liberal Party of Canada voter for most of my life) and find myself guilty of many of the behaviours you list in here, particular in wanting to simply regulate social media into nonexistence to restore the elite gatekeepers. At least in Canada we’re going to get to see if the EU and UK has any success at this before we try.
But if you’re right and that effort is doomed to failure — we have crossed a rubicon and elite gatekeeping is never coming back — then it has big implications for the entire project of social progress. I am more pessimistic than you that if the elites simply engage with the public that things can move forward.
Immigration here in Canada is a good example. Broadly speaking, Canada only had white immigration until the 1960s when, under Trudeau Sr, the modern version of race-blind points-based immigration was invented. The government and elites pushed this, to a large extent, on a more conservative population. If social media had existed it may have never happened in the first place! Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!) while having good social integration and maintaining high public support. The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
Is it “populist” that now for the first time in my life, there are active voices in Canada saying we should go back to all-white immigration? That used to be off-limits, beyond the pale, and in my opinion rightly so. (But they’re not wrong that multicultural immigration only works up to a certain rate — which the Trudeau LPC broke… so it’s more complex)
This comment has ended up somewhat muddled, so I’ll try to just summarize it here. I’m not convinced that we ever would’ve had our modern multicultural immigration system in the 1960s in the first place without elite gatekeepers and if social media had existed then. And I’m *really* worried that the Overton window is now shifting back to some really dark places — somewhat legitimately in backlash to the excesses of the “woke” Trudeau Liberals — but the pendulum swinging back is going to go really far without any kind of brake pedal from elite gatekeepers.
Anyway A+ essay, I’ll be sending this to people. It challenged my thinking.
"Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!)"
Was it really, or was that just the messaging from the elites? Perhaps it was always a failure and the only thing changed in 2015 was that people had the ability to talk about it.
Perhaps the "success" of mass immigration and multiculturalism was always a fraud and the truth was just suppressed.
Spicy! Okay, I’ll engage with ideas that were suppressed by elites until recently.
Why do you say it wasn’t a success? Again, not the post-2015 (and really 2021-2023) ridiculous surge of fake students and TFWs. Talking about the Canadian immigration system of 1970-2010 or so. What are you basing this on?
For me, it’s not being told this by elites, it’s my own judgement. It just … worked. Most immigrants were able to easily find jobs (again, points system, with family reunification being the minority) and our sponsorship system for refugees was basically the envy of the world. Numbers were controlled and social integration was high. (As Matt and Jen at The Line have pointed out, there is a climate factor — nothing integrates a new immigrant like a Canadian winter, and draws people together regardless of background or skin colour.)
I just don’t see it that elites were deceiving us that the system was working. I think it really was working.
My skepticism is that I think no large amount of immigration into a modern developed nation can really be a considered a success. Humans are deeply social creatures and the bonds we have with each other are often more important to us than our own lives. When you have a society that is settled and mostly homogenous, and you change that by immigration, it will take generations for those bonds to fully rebuild. I do think that the weather does help (it seems to make people nicer in Minnesota!), but the social cohesion and natural affections of the people towards each other aren't going to recover for a long time. In other words, a nation can't just be "an idea."
I think that humans are psychologically affected by immigration and demographics change far more than people think (or want to think). We are not interchangeable cogs in some giant machine - our nation/people is part of our soul and changing that changes takes something away from us. It almost feels like theft.
This article, to continue our conversation, was of course not surprising to me. I always assumed that at least some people on the liberal side realised the folly of relying on censorship alone, and it is pleasant to see I was correct.
I loved Metro Caravan too, and would always try the "weirdest" thing on offer. And I have happy memories of my multicultural elementary class in 1970s Scarborough. But I think, as well as considering where we are and what to do next, it is worth considering how much the pieties of yesterday led naturally or even inevitably to where we are today.
It's great to say "we should have just got off at the right stop instead of riding the train to the end", but given the arguments and tactics used to get us on the train in the first place, was that ever a realistic option?
Of course we should always aim to get off at the right stop. If the 2012-2022 insanity led us to take the train too far one way (“anything other than full-throated support for open borders is racism, you racist scum!”) then the current moment risks riding the train too far the other way.
As we all know, the Internet encourages binary thinking. Let’s swim against that tide!
> The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
All largely reasonable, except the confidence in this conclusion. You just can't evaluate the counterfactual of where Canada would have been without that multicultural immigration. At best, you can say it wasn't a disaster some were predicting and seemed fine, all things considered.
That’s fair. I’m injecting some of my own cosmopolitan values here, that it’s a priori just better to admit people of all races and cultures vs try to keep a monoculture.
I will say, though, it is undeniable that this alternate-history white-British Canada definitely would have way more boring food.
You’ve heard it but if you had gatekeepers shielding you from “unfortunate” information, how the hell would you know if integration has been successful and when it comes to UK censorship online, let’s just put it this way, I used to listen to some mainstream and relate but now I’ve a VPN and won’t listen to single word from the commie bastards in charge that I am now sworn to fight to my dying breath you think you are taking my children’s right to free expression from her, I’ll see you hanged you traitorous fucking scumbags! So not the best long term strategy, I’d say.
Years ago, I was in a public health class and the professor, who had to be in his mid '50's, told us "you cannot ever lie, mislead, or withhold information to the public or you will lose the public's trust and you will deserve it. And it will take years to earn that public trust back." This was when W was president , so most of the students rolled their eyes because we had an idiot for president. He patiently explained that people make decisions for reasons and they're rarely stupid. Often times it's because they have different values, but it could also be due to having different experiences, needs, life situations or information and it was our job to listen to the public and take those factors into account in our responses to things like crises or fights over policy. As far as he was concerned our strongest took was persuasion. The field of public health has changed a lot since then.
I mention this because that worldview seems much rarer amongst people who self-identify as elites. One of the things that I took away from that class was that persuading people meant that you had to actually listen to people and that could lead to you having to reevaluate your own positions. It's risky if you have an emotional attachment to your positions, but if you're going to present yourself as the smart, rational side, you really do have to ensure that your information is accurate and complete and that your reasoning does make sense. You might have to admit that you got something wrong. It's much more comfortable to tell yourself that the public is full of bigots, idiots and rubes who are easily fooled by fake news.
I spent many years working in collaborative processes where we tried, and sometimes succeeded, in bring divergent viewpoints together. This was mostly before social media amplified the divisions, but there were people and organizations who actively promoted the extremes and sometimes tried to disrupt the process. I do not think, reflecting, that gatekeepers - liberal or otherwise - had anything resembling control of what people brought to the table, but then these were all face-to-face encounters in which lived experience held equal sway with information from "sources."
When it worked it was the kind of inquiry that John Dewey envisioned leading to a continuing community conversation, to a community that informed itself and acted on that. I suppose he believed that the extremes would be moderated, and I have seen that happen. And I think the "liberal (I hate these labels)" aversion to the fray of social media stems from knowing that it can happen and judging that it should. Having also seen the outcomes of sincere dialogue blown away by the will to power of interests who cannot accept the outcome and continue to profit as they would like, I subscribe to that "should."
Which leads me to my usual point: What "controls" is the story or myth people share about what it is we're all doing here. Social media currently exacerbate the American myths of individuality and competition (violent competition if necessary). It is the final(?) tool of imperialism, which must keep on colonizing something and, having subjugated material reality, is now colonizing the minds of those who allow that. If there has been something different to pick out of our culture, social media would, I think, reinforce that. If we don't cultivate a new guiding myth, the collapse of anything resembling democracy is inevitable.
One suggestion for starting the new myth: It must insist on face-to-interaction. Checking on your Aunt's health on Facebook, sure, and sharing pictures from your trip to the islands. Its just the new mail or phone call. But having tried both public engagement and teaching on-line, I am persuaded (with a little help from Neil Postman and others) that we are a long ways down a path we should have known better than to take.
I think the problems with this essay, which is indeed well-done - is that it accepts a false premise that effective persuasion is possible during a continuing free-for-all in which everyone is struggling to preserve their identity. It isn't There have to be widely accepted "ground rules" suggesting that agreement is the desired outcome and that compromising to attain that outcome is a desirable thing. When people work face-to-face with at least some regard for each other, the winner take all nature of American politics can be (usually has been) mitigated. That doesn't happen on-line.
In Britain, less than 1% of trials by jury end in a hung jury. 15% result in a "majority" decision (defined as 10 or 11 out of the Twelve) and the rest (a whopping 85%) are unanimous decisions, arrived at within 2 hours. There's alot of persuasion going on in the jury room.
My guess is that the "Practice of Community" is members agreeing on everything that pertains to that community. In wider society, that force may become the ultima ratio is persuasion enough even for the most truculent.
For the rest of us, there's Jane Austen: Persuasion is part of the human condition.
Juries quietly hum along as part of the system. demonstrating that people can ordinarily find agreement when they are face-to-face and operating with clear ground rules. And also, in my mind, making the case for one form or another of sortition as a way of filling legislative seats. People have also proposed "values juries" for decision making beyond the judicial system, but I am not aware of any real world examples.
Uk lefties decided to just get rid of Jury’s altogether. Last time the libtards were in we lost the right for a state funded defender, they’re in again so goodbye to Jury’s. You’re on the path as well don’t you worry about that none, they are loving your assisted dying thing over here that’s for sure and you’ll be cancelling Jury’s soon enough in Canada.
The notion that the premise is false is something that should be proved, not assumed. Authorities should not be cracking down on conversations, but building trust. They arguably have lost that trust from many missteps, and suppression of conversations are a big part of that.
Authorities should indeed be building trust. But my assertion that the premise fails is not an assumption. It is based on several decades of hands-on experience in places where the powers-that-be have not suppressed, and in many cases, encouraged the community conversation. Even with at least some political support, the process has to be face-to-face with ground rules that are agreed upon by the participants or it still flounders. Good intentions are not enough.
Dan, I appreciate you grabbing a genuinely wicked problem and advancing it rather than just diagnosing. The self-critical positioning -- liberal critiquing liberal discourse norms -- is harder than blaming outgroups, and you worked to make it constructive.
For your consideration though, I'd like to suggest that the algorithms-vs-gatekeeping framing may be a false dichotomy. There's a third factor - population strain. When people are economically precarious, culturally dislocated, experiencing rapid change they didn't choose, they become more receptive to simple narratives promising safety and certainty. This isn't new. Weimar Germany, post-Soviet Russia, various authoritarian turns correlate with periods of acute social stress. The medium changes; the underlying dynamic doesn't.
This suggests that populism isn't primarily a supply-side phenomenon (algorithms pushing content, gatekeepers failing to filter). It's also demand-side, and might be exploited. Strained populations *want* easy answers. Any sufficiently stressed society will find or create channels for that demand.
And that offers a possible gatekeeper reframe. Cultural gatekeepers weren't usually appointed by society -- they emerged at informational chokepoints and legitimated themselves retrospectively. Publishers, broadcasters, universities occupied positions that happened to control distribution, then developed justifying narratives about quality and standards. The power came first; the merit story followed.
This means "restoring gatekeeping" might be mistargeted. We can't consciously restore what was never consciously installed. But it also might mean that gatekeeping hasn't disappeared. It has shifted. Algorithms and platform owners aspire to be the new toll-road operators.
The question then might not be gatekeeping vs. no gatekeeping. It might instead be: what accountability mechanisms ensure whoever holds positional power delivers genuine value rather than comfortable extraction? "Persuade or perish" may be necessary but not sufficient. We might also need institutional design for the gatekeepers we're getting anyway.
You're right that this still needs persuasive elite engagement, but it might change how.
I don't know about this rational persuasion stuff, Dan. The rest of the article is great, and I agree with all the pessimistic parts. But I'm very skeptical that many people can be persuaded, either by misinformation or by good information.
I will look at this Alexander Coppock stuff, but I am not sure how it can square with the belief polarization literature, or the great work by Dan Kahan suggesting that most people will make basic reading comprehension and arithmetic errors if the right answer goes against their pre-existing political beliefs.
(Kahan does conclude that there is a segment of people who are "scientifically curious" and persuadable by facts, but it's a pretty small percentage of the population.)
My general model of what's going on is that people flock to ideas that make them feel good in various ways. People who feel bad about immigrants are "persuaded" by Trump. People who feel bad about rich people are "persuaded" by AOC.
There are also swing voters. These are people whose instincts and pre-existing convictions put them uncomfortably between the factions. They are "persuaded" to switch sides frequently by the force of thermostatic politics--a discontent with whoever is currently in power that pushes them to "throw the bums out." Specific overrreaches often push them in this direction. The absurdity of the Democrats putting forward a senile Biden for a second term, for example.
People like you and me who have changed a lot of our opinions may overrate the power of rational persuasion. It worked on us, right? But there is also a real sense in which "the party left me." When the American left became more anti-free speech in the 2010s, a pre-existing sacred value of mine felt threatened. This led me to look for a new tribe, and I found the neo-liberal "radical center." But realistically I think if Democrats had stayed the same on the free speech issue and a couple of others, I'd be a happy Elizabeth Warren supporter today.
But maybe all of this is compatible with the key points you're making about persuasion. Persuasion is not the end-all be-all, but it works on the margin and that's all it needs to do in order to swing the pendulum against populist psychos. I hope that is the right takeaway! I will check out the social science you cite.
Damn it Dan, another banger. From the natural sciences side, the fear (and it really is fear), is that within this free-for-all we do not have the tools to compete.
Personally, I think this is wrong - the human reaction of "interest" is greatly underestimated. It's effective, because within a subset of the population it's more of an itch that you can never really get rid of... teach someone something interesting, then those few go out in to the world, learn a bit more and teach others ect. And it's happening globally.
I do wonder if we (meaning academics, but potentially other "elites") do just need to focus more on personability and presentation? I mean if we are simply competing with charismatic others telling the hoipoloi what they want to hear then why not lean in to charm? Charisma? Or god forbid humour?? This was a feature of Carl Sagan, and even someone like Attenborough. And it's clearly lacking in many who have tried to follow in their stead...
I believe that in times where most content is generated by AI, we need to bring back the gatekeepers. There is no alternative and it is already happening, for good reasons.
The real question is how to bring back the gatekeepers in a democratic and decentralized manner.
This poses interesting questions, even from a purely software engineering point of view.
I think Reddit is probably the closest we've seen to a democratic and decentralised gatekeeping solution in software design over an open internet. That should give us pause for thought as to the limits of what is possible.
Good piece but I think you’re a bit off with the Peter Hotez example. Science is not a humanity. Its validity can not be ‘debated’ in a one to one conversation with someone who is not an expert, and who will likely just work hard to create ‘gotchya’ questions. He was right to turn that down, by contrast to Harris who really shouldn’t have turned down Rogan.
Scientific debate is hard to do well in front of a lay audience. But if we can't do it then we are truly screwed.
I think it has to be really long form and slow paced. Like you could do an exchange of long video messages with slides and visuals, with a day or two in between to put your response together. I think Hotez should have said yes but insisted on a format like that.
Yeah good thought. One additional principle though is that a scientific debate, if the set up of that debate gives the impression of two equally valid points of view, should be conducted exclusively between experts in that field. You could have a different format - for instance a Q&A where lay people could ask scientists questions. But a typical two sided debate can’t pitch an expert against a non-expert.
This is exactly the kind of scenario where we should be protecting gatekeeping. We’ve seen the BBC fail in this by ‘both-siding’ the climate crisis for years. To me, scientific gatekeeping has a really compelling purpose in a way that cultural gatekeeping - as Dan suggests - doesn’t.
I see what you're saying, but I think if we want to achieve the goal of showing people that nuts like RFK are genuinely nuts, you're going to have to have experts debate non-experts. The reason why I suggested slowing the process down is because I think that would give the experts better opportunities to show why the non-experts are out to lunch and make that accessible to a lay audience.
One could have Hotez debate Jay Bhattacharya or something, but the problem is that Bhattacharya doesn't actually agree with RFK about much, and what Bhattacharya does think is within the realm of reasonable science--so he might even win on the merits. People might even conclude that Bhattacharya's win shows that RFK is sane!
I absolutely believe that a good science popularizer could beat RFK in a debate with the format I have in mind, in a way that could make a real difference. People wouldn't learn as much as they would from a debate between two qualified scientists, but that isn't the point.
Excellent column, Dan, another in a series of the best ones I've found on Substack.
About ten years ago--which was fifteen years after assigning Walter Lippmann's essay "The Indispensable Opposition" (1939) every year in my philosophy survey class, I noticed the real dilemma that Lippmann does not solve: he says there must be a forum in which both sides of an issue are obligated to speak and be heard, and he says the goal is to find the truth. He does not, however, specify what is to be done with those who have had their say and heard the rebuttal, and had their position exposed beyond reasonable doubt as false, but still hold to their view, which has been thoroughly adjudicated.
I'm guessing that in Lippmann's rational world, there would still be the category of "heretic" and those who refuse to abide by the consensus would in some fashion need to be banished (from the forum if not from the society at large), and regarded as incorrigibles (or, perhaps, "deplorables.")
I'm not suggesting that I agree that such banishment should take place, only that it seems inevitable given Lippmann's assumptions. So I have begun to see a potential fist inside Lippmann's velvet glove.
here's the text to the Lippmann essay, which I consider foundational to the discussion of debate and free speech:
Those who study religious history may have an advantage in thinking about these issues. My own ancestors were religious dissenters. On my mother's side they were Anabaptists, members of independent sects that stood apart from both the post Reformation Protestant and Catholic establishments, and who endured intense persecution, causing most to flee to Holland or to the Americas. Geographical migration is one "solution" to the problem.
When I read about crackdowns on speech in European countries I often think back to the Anabaptists and am reminded that similar patterns of state dogma still exist, although religious belief and practice, unlike political belief and practice, has been largely set apart into the realm of the private and thus does not usually draw persecution.
In regard to your essay, another area that needs to be explored carefully is the assumption that the term "censorship industrial complex" is a baseless right wing trope. The term was in fact put into currency by Michael Shellenberger, a writer who does not fit comfortably into the provocateur stereotype associated with Tucker, Rogan, Owens, etc.
Shellenberger's use of the term "censorship industrial complex" is, I believe, quite well founded. Given that your essay is about "gatekeepers" it seems only proper to examine and carefully weigh his evidence and conclusions, and assimilate the fruits of that study into your thinking.
A final observation: Shellenberger is now a professor at the University of Austin, which is a fascinating institution, as it is conceived largely as a refuge and nursery for dissenters from the dominant orthodoxies, not unlike institutions founded by religious dissenters in the post-Reformation era, which often became often seedbeds of creative thought, and provided ideas and leaders that shaped the mainstream. And some of which ultimately became the mainstream.
During Trump's first term, I definitely had Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Covid started, I believed the prevailing official narrative.
My personal worldview was turned upside down when the government started saying things about Covid and immunity that, as a lifelong science nerd and lay student of immunity, I knew were not correct. Once you see the man behind the curtain, you can't unsee him.
There definitely *is* a censorship industrial complex.
Given that some liberals accept that they need to learn to argue rationally and persuade holders of opposing viewpoints, it seems that we may need to establish places that are widely known where they could go and learn to do that. Sadly, that is not going to happen in college.
This is a very interesting article, and I agree with many of the points you make. But a major piece of your argument hinges on the assumption that it will be nearly impossible to regulate social media or the Internet, which is a huge leap to make. And your logic here is both circular and self-defeating: regulating misinformation cannot work because the people are too misinformed to accept regulation. You argue the result of past (effete) regulation (that lacked actual substantive legislation) resulted in more misinformation, not less, which is notably not backed up by data.
It's also worth mentioning certain elite institutions--i.e. megacorporations--run social media; this is their Frankenstein's monster. The most elite of the elites are winning, not losing. But I would agree with the notion that we need more than just to regulate social media--we need to transform our education system and create a better informed populace.
Beyond all that, you repeatedly claim liberals and elites make sweeping statements that lack context and nuance, and you do the same thing repeatedly e.g. "Social media plays an important role, and often a negative one, but the liberal establishment’s frequent scapegoating of social media-based “misinformation” for all the world’s problems is no more defensible than simplistic populist narratives blaming immigrants or billionaires for them" "Efforts to censor and de-amplify disfavoured views bred widespread anger and resentment among those who saw unaccountable elites exerting undemocratic control over the public conversation."
You also repeatedly refer to your own essays as evidence for your arguments. While they reference other studies, some of the science you refer to argues against your inferences; specifically, you eliminate the nuance from the studies and make inferences that the researchers themselves do not make.
I will refer to these studies below that you linked:
The scientists criticize certain popular narratives about misinformation and disinformation (namely, that people believe everything they see on the Internet or that misinformation is everywhere) but they also have addendums that go against your argument (individual's own biases inform their opinions; they're drawn to information that supports their biases; organizations that allow spread of misinformation should still be held accountable i.e. regulated for it; and partisan misinformation actually does spread faster than accurate partisan information). [One of the studies below also ignores the way in which entertainment and memes can promote misinformation, bad science, and fake news (see: "the alpha wolf" trope); it also ignores how television "news" like Fox News can promote misinformation to the masses].
The research also shows no causation has been proven between misinformation and societal ills (like the rise of authoritarianism and antivaxx) because we haven't done enough research yet, but there's a hell of a lot correlation to examine. And it's inarguable, for instance, that the insurrection D.C. was in direct response to disinformation and misinformation. These "trends" have enormous consequences.
Here are some studies that link social media to the rise of misinformation, disinformation, and the very real and dangerous costs of it:
As liberals, we absolutely need to embrace more persuasion, but the "It's not my job to educate you" crowd was not made up of elites, but everyday folks and activists who were emotionally-, not rationally-driven. However, I think you have an overly rosy view of persuasion. In the same articles you reference about how people are not as gullible as we assume, the researchers also reference how most opinions are formed by individuals' own biases, beliefs, etc. You acknowledge that populist rhetoric and conspiracies spread more widely on social media and are normalized now, and then you go on to argue that "elites" just need to persuade people, even though much of the science you shared reveals the power of implicit bias against persuasion.
To add to this, I would even argue that it's not social media inherently that's the problem, but certain types of social media that encourage not persuasion and argument but short-form/48 word "hot takes" like Xitter and TikTok.
I also want to address your claims in another article about climate alarmism. General consensus among climate scientists remains that climate change will be, if not apocalyptic, hugely destructive to society and millions, if not billions, of lives will be lost directly or indirectly. Yet you brushed climate alarmism off as irrational. The stakes are high enough that it's still incredibly rational to heed the general consensus among experts and be alarmed.
I think I might write a larger piece in response to this with more links...
Regarding climate change, the Micheal Mann strategy of trying to sue his critics into oblivion is the very sort of strategy that Dan's piece is arguing against.
After re-reading the essay and submitting a comment, I did my daily browse of the New York Times and found this wonderful specimen of the sort of rhetoric that on the one hand proves so reassuring to "true believers" in an institutionalized dominant dogmatic paradigm, and so frustrating for folks who actually look beyond the rhetoric.
An interesting essay. I comment as someone who views 21st c. Liberalism as likely well past its half life....populism or no populism. I have never read Spengler’s but the idea that entropy must apply to every civilisation seems axiomatic....why would an exception be made of Western Liberalism? But it is not my intention to rain on the parade of Liberalism’s Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known.
In terms of the liberalism/populism political struggle implicit in this essay, there are two fundamental ways of thinking about politics. A limited one is about negotiating disagreements and conflicts of interest among the citizenry. But Liberalism gave rise to a more grandiose one....... bringing about ‘Progress’ by political means. We in the West have been schooled into an expectation that there is a political solution to every societal problem. And this expectation can lead people - especially the most politically engaged kind - down some big rabbit holes.
In terms of the liberal establishment’s loss of its gatekeeping power, the internet age has created what Unherd columnist Mary Harrington has elegantly characterised as a “digital-era of decentralised, self-coordinating, swarm governance”.
The invention of the digital search engine has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism. But it has created a different problem for the would-be informed citizen. Digital media has deluged people with an 'information' overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. And into this information/disinformation supply-side log jam, along came social media – tailor-made for the uncurious and suggestible. In order to genuinely have a 'belief' about something - impending climate catastrophe or ‘systemic racism’ for example - one would need to have invested a deal of energy in weighing evidence for these things. But how many actually do this as opposed to simply noticing the social signals about what is the most favoured opinion... with benefits?
It is Liberalism that has created all this and will now inevitably mutate as a consequence.
Great writing as always, Dan! Succinct, clear, and really deep research into the phenomena of social media driving a change in the way that the public gets/reacts to news!
Excellent and thought provoking essay as usual. I am with you on Parts 1 and 2. Part 3 is a bit more challenging, as it gets into what can be done, which is much more challenging than diagnosing the problem. I am skeptical that persuasion can work well on social media or podcasts. A Canadian prime minister famously said decades ago that an election is not a good place to discuss serious issues (I am paraphrasing). She was raked over the coals for that comment, and lost the election, although I think she was quite right. I see social media like elections (and worse referendums) as fora where passion has an unreasonable advantage over reason. The real work that influences how people make decisions about their political positions at election time or on social media happens outside of these fora and over long periods of time.
A story to illustrate this is Paul Well's account on Substack (not paywalled) of his experiences as a reporter during the 1995 Quebec referendum on independence (https://substack.com/@paulwells/p-176565033). From talking to Quebeckers during the referendum campaign, he realized that people were not open to arguments and changing their minds, i.e. not persuadable. As he puts it, "the pump was well primed before" any of the political speeches during the campaign. I feel the same way about trying to persuade people during a social media encounter or a podcast. The cognitive deficit theory may be overblown, but people really do not spend their time thinking about political or complex issues. When asked, they make their decision quickly based on their inclinations and the cultural influences accumulated in their head over a lifetime. The Quebec nationalists spent decades building their cultural power, and that became so dominant that nearly half of Quebeckers were ready to embark on a reckless and unnecessary adventure.
So, to me, the loss of cultural power is the problem and simply trying to persuade people on social media is unlikely to work. It will take time to rebuild cultural power, if liberals want to get started. In the meantime, it may be that innovative social media strategies (e.g. middleware) can help. Online equivalents of citizen assemblies may also help. What is needed is to give people time to think about an issue in a structured way. Without that, persuasion efforts may have disappointing results.
Absolute tour de force. This one needs to get into the New York Times and should get you an interview on Ezra Klein’s show.
I am a small-L liberal (though also a large-L Liberal Party of Canada voter for most of my life) and find myself guilty of many of the behaviours you list in here, particular in wanting to simply regulate social media into nonexistence to restore the elite gatekeepers. At least in Canada we’re going to get to see if the EU and UK has any success at this before we try.
But if you’re right and that effort is doomed to failure — we have crossed a rubicon and elite gatekeeping is never coming back — then it has big implications for the entire project of social progress. I am more pessimistic than you that if the elites simply engage with the public that things can move forward.
Immigration here in Canada is a good example. Broadly speaking, Canada only had white immigration until the 1960s when, under Trudeau Sr, the modern version of race-blind points-based immigration was invented. The government and elites pushed this, to a large extent, on a more conservative population. If social media had existed it may have never happened in the first place! Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!) while having good social integration and maintaining high public support. The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
Then of course, as we know, post 2015, Trudeau Jr broke everything by spiking immigration rates too high too fast (see https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-how-canada-got-immigration-right-and-then-very-wrong/ ) which is a perfect example of how elites from 2012-2022 lost their minds and lost the trust of the public.
Is it “populist” that now for the first time in my life, there are active voices in Canada saying we should go back to all-white immigration? That used to be off-limits, beyond the pale, and in my opinion rightly so. (But they’re not wrong that multicultural immigration only works up to a certain rate — which the Trudeau LPC broke… so it’s more complex)
This comment has ended up somewhat muddled, so I’ll try to just summarize it here. I’m not convinced that we ever would’ve had our modern multicultural immigration system in the 1960s in the first place without elite gatekeepers and if social media had existed then. And I’m *really* worried that the Overton window is now shifting back to some really dark places — somewhat legitimately in backlash to the excesses of the “woke” Trudeau Liberals — but the pendulum swinging back is going to go really far without any kind of brake pedal from elite gatekeepers.
Anyway A+ essay, I’ll be sending this to people. It challenged my thinking.
"Except then it turned out to be an amazing success, in my opinion, the most successful multicultural immigration system in the world in terms of high immigration rates (twice as high as the United States!)"
Was it really, or was that just the messaging from the elites? Perhaps it was always a failure and the only thing changed in 2015 was that people had the ability to talk about it.
Perhaps the "success" of mass immigration and multiculturalism was always a fraud and the truth was just suppressed.
Spicy! Okay, I’ll engage with ideas that were suppressed by elites until recently.
Why do you say it wasn’t a success? Again, not the post-2015 (and really 2021-2023) ridiculous surge of fake students and TFWs. Talking about the Canadian immigration system of 1970-2010 or so. What are you basing this on?
For me, it’s not being told this by elites, it’s my own judgement. It just … worked. Most immigrants were able to easily find jobs (again, points system, with family reunification being the minority) and our sponsorship system for refugees was basically the envy of the world. Numbers were controlled and social integration was high. (As Matt and Jen at The Line have pointed out, there is a climate factor — nothing integrates a new immigrant like a Canadian winter, and draws people together regardless of background or skin colour.)
I just don’t see it that elites were deceiving us that the system was working. I think it really was working.
My skepticism is that I think no large amount of immigration into a modern developed nation can really be a considered a success. Humans are deeply social creatures and the bonds we have with each other are often more important to us than our own lives. When you have a society that is settled and mostly homogenous, and you change that by immigration, it will take generations for those bonds to fully rebuild. I do think that the weather does help (it seems to make people nicer in Minnesota!), but the social cohesion and natural affections of the people towards each other aren't going to recover for a long time. In other words, a nation can't just be "an idea."
I think that humans are psychologically affected by immigration and demographics change far more than people think (or want to think). We are not interchangeable cogs in some giant machine - our nation/people is part of our soul and changing that changes takes something away from us. It almost feels like theft.
Bingo.
It was actually Conservative PM John Diefenbaker's premiership that removed the racial restrictions.
This article, to continue our conversation, was of course not surprising to me. I always assumed that at least some people on the liberal side realised the folly of relying on censorship alone, and it is pleasant to see I was correct.
I loved Metro Caravan too, and would always try the "weirdest" thing on offer. And I have happy memories of my multicultural elementary class in 1970s Scarborough. But I think, as well as considering where we are and what to do next, it is worth considering how much the pieties of yesterday led naturally or even inevitably to where we are today.
It's great to say "we should have just got off at the right stop instead of riding the train to the end", but given the arguments and tactics used to get us on the train in the first place, was that ever a realistic option?
Of course we should always aim to get off at the right stop. If the 2012-2022 insanity led us to take the train too far one way (“anything other than full-throated support for open borders is racism, you racist scum!”) then the current moment risks riding the train too far the other way.
As we all know, the Internet encourages binary thinking. Let’s swim against that tide!
> The elites were right, and the masses were too blind to see that it can work.
All largely reasonable, except the confidence in this conclusion. You just can't evaluate the counterfactual of where Canada would have been without that multicultural immigration. At best, you can say it wasn't a disaster some were predicting and seemed fine, all things considered.
That’s fair. I’m injecting some of my own cosmopolitan values here, that it’s a priori just better to admit people of all races and cultures vs try to keep a monoculture.
I will say, though, it is undeniable that this alternate-history white-British Canada definitely would have way more boring food.
As opposed to the current Canada: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/scarborough-ontario.html
You’ve heard it but if you had gatekeepers shielding you from “unfortunate” information, how the hell would you know if integration has been successful and when it comes to UK censorship online, let’s just put it this way, I used to listen to some mainstream and relate but now I’ve a VPN and won’t listen to single word from the commie bastards in charge that I am now sworn to fight to my dying breath you think you are taking my children’s right to free expression from her, I’ll see you hanged you traitorous fucking scumbags! So not the best long term strategy, I’d say.
Years ago, I was in a public health class and the professor, who had to be in his mid '50's, told us "you cannot ever lie, mislead, or withhold information to the public or you will lose the public's trust and you will deserve it. And it will take years to earn that public trust back." This was when W was president , so most of the students rolled their eyes because we had an idiot for president. He patiently explained that people make decisions for reasons and they're rarely stupid. Often times it's because they have different values, but it could also be due to having different experiences, needs, life situations or information and it was our job to listen to the public and take those factors into account in our responses to things like crises or fights over policy. As far as he was concerned our strongest took was persuasion. The field of public health has changed a lot since then.
I mention this because that worldview seems much rarer amongst people who self-identify as elites. One of the things that I took away from that class was that persuading people meant that you had to actually listen to people and that could lead to you having to reevaluate your own positions. It's risky if you have an emotional attachment to your positions, but if you're going to present yourself as the smart, rational side, you really do have to ensure that your information is accurate and complete and that your reasoning does make sense. You might have to admit that you got something wrong. It's much more comfortable to tell yourself that the public is full of bigots, idiots and rubes who are easily fooled by fake news.
Beautifully stated.
I spent many years working in collaborative processes where we tried, and sometimes succeeded, in bring divergent viewpoints together. This was mostly before social media amplified the divisions, but there were people and organizations who actively promoted the extremes and sometimes tried to disrupt the process. I do not think, reflecting, that gatekeepers - liberal or otherwise - had anything resembling control of what people brought to the table, but then these were all face-to-face encounters in which lived experience held equal sway with information from "sources."
When it worked it was the kind of inquiry that John Dewey envisioned leading to a continuing community conversation, to a community that informed itself and acted on that. I suppose he believed that the extremes would be moderated, and I have seen that happen. And I think the "liberal (I hate these labels)" aversion to the fray of social media stems from knowing that it can happen and judging that it should. Having also seen the outcomes of sincere dialogue blown away by the will to power of interests who cannot accept the outcome and continue to profit as they would like, I subscribe to that "should."
Which leads me to my usual point: What "controls" is the story or myth people share about what it is we're all doing here. Social media currently exacerbate the American myths of individuality and competition (violent competition if necessary). It is the final(?) tool of imperialism, which must keep on colonizing something and, having subjugated material reality, is now colonizing the minds of those who allow that. If there has been something different to pick out of our culture, social media would, I think, reinforce that. If we don't cultivate a new guiding myth, the collapse of anything resembling democracy is inevitable.
One suggestion for starting the new myth: It must insist on face-to-interaction. Checking on your Aunt's health on Facebook, sure, and sharing pictures from your trip to the islands. Its just the new mail or phone call. But having tried both public engagement and teaching on-line, I am persuaded (with a little help from Neil Postman and others) that we are a long ways down a path we should have known better than to take.
I think the problems with this essay, which is indeed well-done - is that it accepts a false premise that effective persuasion is possible during a continuing free-for-all in which everyone is struggling to preserve their identity. It isn't There have to be widely accepted "ground rules" suggesting that agreement is the desired outcome and that compromising to attain that outcome is a desirable thing. When people work face-to-face with at least some regard for each other, the winner take all nature of American politics can be (usually has been) mitigated. That doesn't happen on-line.
Your stress on face-to-face communications is important and well-stated. Thank you.
In Britain, less than 1% of trials by jury end in a hung jury. 15% result in a "majority" decision (defined as 10 or 11 out of the Twelve) and the rest (a whopping 85%) are unanimous decisions, arrived at within 2 hours. There's alot of persuasion going on in the jury room.
My guess is that the "Practice of Community" is members agreeing on everything that pertains to that community. In wider society, that force may become the ultima ratio is persuasion enough even for the most truculent.
For the rest of us, there's Jane Austen: Persuasion is part of the human condition.
Juries quietly hum along as part of the system. demonstrating that people can ordinarily find agreement when they are face-to-face and operating with clear ground rules. And also, in my mind, making the case for one form or another of sortition as a way of filling legislative seats. People have also proposed "values juries" for decision making beyond the judicial system, but I am not aware of any real world examples.
Uk lefties decided to just get rid of Jury’s altogether. Last time the libtards were in we lost the right for a state funded defender, they’re in again so goodbye to Jury’s. You’re on the path as well don’t you worry about that none, they are loving your assisted dying thing over here that’s for sure and you’ll be cancelling Jury’s soon enough in Canada.
The notion that the premise is false is something that should be proved, not assumed. Authorities should not be cracking down on conversations, but building trust. They arguably have lost that trust from many missteps, and suppression of conversations are a big part of that.
Authorities should indeed be building trust. But my assertion that the premise fails is not an assumption. It is based on several decades of hands-on experience in places where the powers-that-be have not suppressed, and in many cases, encouraged the community conversation. Even with at least some political support, the process has to be face-to-face with ground rules that are agreed upon by the participants or it still flounders. Good intentions are not enough.
A really important article. Is there any way you could try and get a version of this into The Guardian and New York Times?
Dan, I appreciate you grabbing a genuinely wicked problem and advancing it rather than just diagnosing. The self-critical positioning -- liberal critiquing liberal discourse norms -- is harder than blaming outgroups, and you worked to make it constructive.
For your consideration though, I'd like to suggest that the algorithms-vs-gatekeeping framing may be a false dichotomy. There's a third factor - population strain. When people are economically precarious, culturally dislocated, experiencing rapid change they didn't choose, they become more receptive to simple narratives promising safety and certainty. This isn't new. Weimar Germany, post-Soviet Russia, various authoritarian turns correlate with periods of acute social stress. The medium changes; the underlying dynamic doesn't.
This suggests that populism isn't primarily a supply-side phenomenon (algorithms pushing content, gatekeepers failing to filter). It's also demand-side, and might be exploited. Strained populations *want* easy answers. Any sufficiently stressed society will find or create channels for that demand.
And that offers a possible gatekeeper reframe. Cultural gatekeepers weren't usually appointed by society -- they emerged at informational chokepoints and legitimated themselves retrospectively. Publishers, broadcasters, universities occupied positions that happened to control distribution, then developed justifying narratives about quality and standards. The power came first; the merit story followed.
This means "restoring gatekeeping" might be mistargeted. We can't consciously restore what was never consciously installed. But it also might mean that gatekeeping hasn't disappeared. It has shifted. Algorithms and platform owners aspire to be the new toll-road operators.
The question then might not be gatekeeping vs. no gatekeeping. It might instead be: what accountability mechanisms ensure whoever holds positional power delivers genuine value rather than comfortable extraction? "Persuade or perish" may be necessary but not sufficient. We might also need institutional design for the gatekeepers we're getting anyway.
You're right that this still needs persuasive elite engagement, but it might change how.
I don't know about this rational persuasion stuff, Dan. The rest of the article is great, and I agree with all the pessimistic parts. But I'm very skeptical that many people can be persuaded, either by misinformation or by good information.
I will look at this Alexander Coppock stuff, but I am not sure how it can square with the belief polarization literature, or the great work by Dan Kahan suggesting that most people will make basic reading comprehension and arithmetic errors if the right answer goes against their pre-existing political beliefs.
(Kahan does conclude that there is a segment of people who are "scientifically curious" and persuadable by facts, but it's a pretty small percentage of the population.)
My general model of what's going on is that people flock to ideas that make them feel good in various ways. People who feel bad about immigrants are "persuaded" by Trump. People who feel bad about rich people are "persuaded" by AOC.
There are also swing voters. These are people whose instincts and pre-existing convictions put them uncomfortably between the factions. They are "persuaded" to switch sides frequently by the force of thermostatic politics--a discontent with whoever is currently in power that pushes them to "throw the bums out." Specific overrreaches often push them in this direction. The absurdity of the Democrats putting forward a senile Biden for a second term, for example.
People like you and me who have changed a lot of our opinions may overrate the power of rational persuasion. It worked on us, right? But there is also a real sense in which "the party left me." When the American left became more anti-free speech in the 2010s, a pre-existing sacred value of mine felt threatened. This led me to look for a new tribe, and I found the neo-liberal "radical center." But realistically I think if Democrats had stayed the same on the free speech issue and a couple of others, I'd be a happy Elizabeth Warren supporter today.
But maybe all of this is compatible with the key points you're making about persuasion. Persuasion is not the end-all be-all, but it works on the margin and that's all it needs to do in order to swing the pendulum against populist psychos. I hope that is the right takeaway! I will check out the social science you cite.
Damn it Dan, another banger. From the natural sciences side, the fear (and it really is fear), is that within this free-for-all we do not have the tools to compete.
Personally, I think this is wrong - the human reaction of "interest" is greatly underestimated. It's effective, because within a subset of the population it's more of an itch that you can never really get rid of... teach someone something interesting, then those few go out in to the world, learn a bit more and teach others ect. And it's happening globally.
I do wonder if we (meaning academics, but potentially other "elites") do just need to focus more on personability and presentation? I mean if we are simply competing with charismatic others telling the hoipoloi what they want to hear then why not lean in to charm? Charisma? Or god forbid humour?? This was a feature of Carl Sagan, and even someone like Attenborough. And it's clearly lacking in many who have tried to follow in their stead...
I believe that in times where most content is generated by AI, we need to bring back the gatekeepers. There is no alternative and it is already happening, for good reasons.
The real question is how to bring back the gatekeepers in a democratic and decentralized manner.
This poses interesting questions, even from a purely software engineering point of view.
I think Reddit is probably the closest we've seen to a democratic and decentralised gatekeeping solution in software design over an open internet. That should give us pause for thought as to the limits of what is possible.
The other example is Wikipedia.
Good piece but I think you’re a bit off with the Peter Hotez example. Science is not a humanity. Its validity can not be ‘debated’ in a one to one conversation with someone who is not an expert, and who will likely just work hard to create ‘gotchya’ questions. He was right to turn that down, by contrast to Harris who really shouldn’t have turned down Rogan.
Scientific debate is hard to do well in front of a lay audience. But if we can't do it then we are truly screwed.
I think it has to be really long form and slow paced. Like you could do an exchange of long video messages with slides and visuals, with a day or two in between to put your response together. I think Hotez should have said yes but insisted on a format like that.
Yeah good thought. One additional principle though is that a scientific debate, if the set up of that debate gives the impression of two equally valid points of view, should be conducted exclusively between experts in that field. You could have a different format - for instance a Q&A where lay people could ask scientists questions. But a typical two sided debate can’t pitch an expert against a non-expert.
This is exactly the kind of scenario where we should be protecting gatekeeping. We’ve seen the BBC fail in this by ‘both-siding’ the climate crisis for years. To me, scientific gatekeeping has a really compelling purpose in a way that cultural gatekeeping - as Dan suggests - doesn’t.
I see what you're saying, but I think if we want to achieve the goal of showing people that nuts like RFK are genuinely nuts, you're going to have to have experts debate non-experts. The reason why I suggested slowing the process down is because I think that would give the experts better opportunities to show why the non-experts are out to lunch and make that accessible to a lay audience.
One could have Hotez debate Jay Bhattacharya or something, but the problem is that Bhattacharya doesn't actually agree with RFK about much, and what Bhattacharya does think is within the realm of reasonable science--so he might even win on the merits. People might even conclude that Bhattacharya's win shows that RFK is sane!
I absolutely believe that a good science popularizer could beat RFK in a debate with the format I have in mind, in a way that could make a real difference. People wouldn't learn as much as they would from a debate between two qualified scientists, but that isn't the point.
Excellent column, Dan, another in a series of the best ones I've found on Substack.
About ten years ago--which was fifteen years after assigning Walter Lippmann's essay "The Indispensable Opposition" (1939) every year in my philosophy survey class, I noticed the real dilemma that Lippmann does not solve: he says there must be a forum in which both sides of an issue are obligated to speak and be heard, and he says the goal is to find the truth. He does not, however, specify what is to be done with those who have had their say and heard the rebuttal, and had their position exposed beyond reasonable doubt as false, but still hold to their view, which has been thoroughly adjudicated.
I'm guessing that in Lippmann's rational world, there would still be the category of "heretic" and those who refuse to abide by the consensus would in some fashion need to be banished (from the forum if not from the society at large), and regarded as incorrigibles (or, perhaps, "deplorables.")
I'm not suggesting that I agree that such banishment should take place, only that it seems inevitable given Lippmann's assumptions. So I have begun to see a potential fist inside Lippmann's velvet glove.
here's the text to the Lippmann essay, which I consider foundational to the discussion of debate and free speech:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/936968943492257/
Those who study religious history may have an advantage in thinking about these issues. My own ancestors were religious dissenters. On my mother's side they were Anabaptists, members of independent sects that stood apart from both the post Reformation Protestant and Catholic establishments, and who endured intense persecution, causing most to flee to Holland or to the Americas. Geographical migration is one "solution" to the problem.
When I read about crackdowns on speech in European countries I often think back to the Anabaptists and am reminded that similar patterns of state dogma still exist, although religious belief and practice, unlike political belief and practice, has been largely set apart into the realm of the private and thus does not usually draw persecution.
In regard to your essay, another area that needs to be explored carefully is the assumption that the term "censorship industrial complex" is a baseless right wing trope. The term was in fact put into currency by Michael Shellenberger, a writer who does not fit comfortably into the provocateur stereotype associated with Tucker, Rogan, Owens, etc.
Shellenberger's use of the term "censorship industrial complex" is, I believe, quite well founded. Given that your essay is about "gatekeepers" it seems only proper to examine and carefully weigh his evidence and conclusions, and assimilate the fruits of that study into your thinking.
A final observation: Shellenberger is now a professor at the University of Austin, which is a fascinating institution, as it is conceived largely as a refuge and nursery for dissenters from the dominant orthodoxies, not unlike institutions founded by religious dissenters in the post-Reformation era, which often became often seedbeds of creative thought, and provided ideas and leaders that shaped the mainstream. And some of which ultimately became the mainstream.
Thanks for the essay.
During Trump's first term, I definitely had Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Covid started, I believed the prevailing official narrative.
My personal worldview was turned upside down when the government started saying things about Covid and immunity that, as a lifelong science nerd and lay student of immunity, I knew were not correct. Once you see the man behind the curtain, you can't unsee him.
There definitely *is* a censorship industrial complex.
Given that some liberals accept that they need to learn to argue rationally and persuade holders of opposing viewpoints, it seems that we may need to establish places that are widely known where they could go and learn to do that. Sadly, that is not going to happen in college.
This is a very interesting article, and I agree with many of the points you make. But a major piece of your argument hinges on the assumption that it will be nearly impossible to regulate social media or the Internet, which is a huge leap to make. And your logic here is both circular and self-defeating: regulating misinformation cannot work because the people are too misinformed to accept regulation. You argue the result of past (effete) regulation (that lacked actual substantive legislation) resulted in more misinformation, not less, which is notably not backed up by data.
It's also worth mentioning certain elite institutions--i.e. megacorporations--run social media; this is their Frankenstein's monster. The most elite of the elites are winning, not losing. But I would agree with the notion that we need more than just to regulate social media--we need to transform our education system and create a better informed populace.
Beyond all that, you repeatedly claim liberals and elites make sweeping statements that lack context and nuance, and you do the same thing repeatedly e.g. "Social media plays an important role, and often a negative one, but the liberal establishment’s frequent scapegoating of social media-based “misinformation” for all the world’s problems is no more defensible than simplistic populist narratives blaming immigrants or billionaires for them" "Efforts to censor and de-amplify disfavoured views bred widespread anger and resentment among those who saw unaccountable elites exerting undemocratic control over the public conversation."
You also repeatedly refer to your own essays as evidence for your arguments. While they reference other studies, some of the science you refer to argues against your inferences; specifically, you eliminate the nuance from the studies and make inferences that the researchers themselves do not make.
I will refer to these studies below that you linked:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051221150412
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07417-w
The scientists criticize certain popular narratives about misinformation and disinformation (namely, that people believe everything they see on the Internet or that misinformation is everywhere) but they also have addendums that go against your argument (individual's own biases inform their opinions; they're drawn to information that supports their biases; organizations that allow spread of misinformation should still be held accountable i.e. regulated for it; and partisan misinformation actually does spread faster than accurate partisan information). [One of the studies below also ignores the way in which entertainment and memes can promote misinformation, bad science, and fake news (see: "the alpha wolf" trope); it also ignores how television "news" like Fox News can promote misinformation to the masses].
The research also shows no causation has been proven between misinformation and societal ills (like the rise of authoritarianism and antivaxx) because we haven't done enough research yet, but there's a hell of a lot correlation to examine. And it's inarguable, for instance, that the insurrection D.C. was in direct response to disinformation and misinformation. These "trends" have enormous consequences.
Here are some studies that link social media to the rise of misinformation, disinformation, and the very real and dangerous costs of it:
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/01-09-2022-infodemics-and-misinformation-negatively-affect-people-s-health-behaviours--new-who-review-finds
https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-news-spreads-faster-true-news-twitter-thanks-people-not-bots
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10623619/
As liberals, we absolutely need to embrace more persuasion, but the "It's not my job to educate you" crowd was not made up of elites, but everyday folks and activists who were emotionally-, not rationally-driven. However, I think you have an overly rosy view of persuasion. In the same articles you reference about how people are not as gullible as we assume, the researchers also reference how most opinions are formed by individuals' own biases, beliefs, etc. You acknowledge that populist rhetoric and conspiracies spread more widely on social media and are normalized now, and then you go on to argue that "elites" just need to persuade people, even though much of the science you shared reveals the power of implicit bias against persuasion.
To add to this, I would even argue that it's not social media inherently that's the problem, but certain types of social media that encourage not persuasion and argument but short-form/48 word "hot takes" like Xitter and TikTok.
I also want to address your claims in another article about climate alarmism. General consensus among climate scientists remains that climate change will be, if not apocalyptic, hugely destructive to society and millions, if not billions, of lives will be lost directly or indirectly. Yet you brushed climate alarmism off as irrational. The stakes are high enough that it's still incredibly rational to heed the general consensus among experts and be alarmed.
I think I might write a larger piece in response to this with more links...
Regarding climate change, the Micheal Mann strategy of trying to sue his critics into oblivion is the very sort of strategy that Dan's piece is arguing against.
Fair enough! I definitely think there’s nuance to the debate
After re-reading the essay and submitting a comment, I did my daily browse of the New York Times and found this wonderful specimen of the sort of rhetoric that on the one hand proves so reassuring to "true believers" in an institutionalized dominant dogmatic paradigm, and so frustrating for folks who actually look beyond the rhetoric.
This is a free link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/climate/climate-change-disinformation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5U8.2xNo.emm4o2oSSbq5&smid=url-share
An interesting essay. I comment as someone who views 21st c. Liberalism as likely well past its half life....populism or no populism. I have never read Spengler’s but the idea that entropy must apply to every civilisation seems axiomatic....why would an exception be made of Western Liberalism? But it is not my intention to rain on the parade of Liberalism’s Goods....they can after all be credited with giving us three centuries of the most amazing human flourishing....the best mankind has ever known.
In terms of the liberalism/populism political struggle implicit in this essay, there are two fundamental ways of thinking about politics. A limited one is about negotiating disagreements and conflicts of interest among the citizenry. But Liberalism gave rise to a more grandiose one....... bringing about ‘Progress’ by political means. We in the West have been schooled into an expectation that there is a political solution to every societal problem. And this expectation can lead people - especially the most politically engaged kind - down some big rabbit holes.
In terms of the liberal establishment’s loss of its gatekeeping power, the internet age has created what Unherd columnist Mary Harrington has elegantly characterised as a “digital-era of decentralised, self-coordinating, swarm governance”.
The invention of the digital search engine has been an absolute marvel for those able to maintain an intellectual balance between curiosity and scepticism. But it has created a different problem for the would-be informed citizen. Digital media has deluged people with an 'information' overload of a scale that even the most informed struggle to intelligently parse and filter. And into this information/disinformation supply-side log jam, along came social media – tailor-made for the uncurious and suggestible. In order to genuinely have a 'belief' about something - impending climate catastrophe or ‘systemic racism’ for example - one would need to have invested a deal of energy in weighing evidence for these things. But how many actually do this as opposed to simply noticing the social signals about what is the most favoured opinion... with benefits?
It is Liberalism that has created all this and will now inevitably mutate as a consequence.
The above are excerpts from my own essay: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
Great writing as always, Dan! Succinct, clear, and really deep research into the phenomena of social media driving a change in the way that the public gets/reacts to news!
Excellent and thought provoking essay as usual. I am with you on Parts 1 and 2. Part 3 is a bit more challenging, as it gets into what can be done, which is much more challenging than diagnosing the problem. I am skeptical that persuasion can work well on social media or podcasts. A Canadian prime minister famously said decades ago that an election is not a good place to discuss serious issues (I am paraphrasing). She was raked over the coals for that comment, and lost the election, although I think she was quite right. I see social media like elections (and worse referendums) as fora where passion has an unreasonable advantage over reason. The real work that influences how people make decisions about their political positions at election time or on social media happens outside of these fora and over long periods of time.
A story to illustrate this is Paul Well's account on Substack (not paywalled) of his experiences as a reporter during the 1995 Quebec referendum on independence (https://substack.com/@paulwells/p-176565033). From talking to Quebeckers during the referendum campaign, he realized that people were not open to arguments and changing their minds, i.e. not persuadable. As he puts it, "the pump was well primed before" any of the political speeches during the campaign. I feel the same way about trying to persuade people during a social media encounter or a podcast. The cognitive deficit theory may be overblown, but people really do not spend their time thinking about political or complex issues. When asked, they make their decision quickly based on their inclinations and the cultural influences accumulated in their head over a lifetime. The Quebec nationalists spent decades building their cultural power, and that became so dominant that nearly half of Quebeckers were ready to embark on a reckless and unnecessary adventure.
So, to me, the loss of cultural power is the problem and simply trying to persuade people on social media is unlikely to work. It will take time to rebuild cultural power, if liberals want to get started. In the meantime, it may be that innovative social media strategies (e.g. middleware) can help. Online equivalents of citizen assemblies may also help. What is needed is to give people time to think about an issue in a structured way. Without that, persuasion efforts may have disappointing results.