The Real Solution to Hate Messages

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

"The whole point of propaganda isto to make you dicut," he says. "So the real question for our time is, how do we scale human judgment?" He suggests a spam filter where people send so much email it would cost them money. And there could be shadow banding and temporary bands that eject communities from social networks.

Maria Ressa is arguably one of the bravest journalists working in the Philippines today. As co-founder and CEO of the media site Rappler, she has withstood death threats, multiple arrests and a rising tide of populist fury that she first saw on Facebook, in the form of a strange and jarring personal attack. Through her story, she reveals, play by play, how an aspiring strongman can use social media to spread falsehoods, sow confusion, intimidate critics and subvert democratic institutions. Nonetheless, she argues Silicon Valley can reverse these trends, and fast. First, tech companies must "wake up," she says, to the threats they've unleashed throughout the Global South. Second, they must recognize that social media is intrinsically designed to favor the strongman over the lone dissident and the propagandist over the truth-teller, which is why it has become the central tool in every aspiring dictator's playbook.