Is There a Way to Scale Globally?

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In Cambridge Analytica's psychological targeting, that one thing they found was that people who have the psychological characteristic of neuroticism always respond to fear. So if you just think about it that way, that you have this system that rewards fear over calm truth, then it's sort of obvious to see why you would get kind of authoritarian people everywhere all at once. And to your earlier point, this is the largest unregulated psychological experiment done in history. Where's the IRB Review Board? Where's the people who said who could be hurt by this experiment?

How can tech companies help flatten the curve? First and foremost, they must address the lethal misinformation and disinformation circulating on their platforms. The problem goes much deeper than fake news, according to Claire Wardle, co-founder and executive director of First Draft. She studies the gray zones of information warfare, where bad actors mix facts with falsehoods, news with gossip, and sincerity with satire. “Most of this stuff isn't fake and most of this stuff isn't news,” Claire argues. If these subtler forms of misinformation go unaddressed, tech companies may not only fail to flatten the curve — they could raise it higher.