No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

231: Garrett Graff: Social Media, Politics, and the Failure to Flourish

Oct 13, 2025
Guest
Garrett M. Graff
In this enlightening conversation, historian and journalist Garrett Graff, host of the award-winning Long Shadow podcast, delves into the dark turn of the internet from a hopeful civic miracle to a dangerous tool for authoritarian control. He discusses how social media once boosted democracy during the Arab Spring but later became a platform for hate and polarization, particularly in Myanmar. Graff stresses the importance of understanding internet history as a civic duty and questions the moral responsibilities of tech executives in shaping our digital future.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
INSIGHT

Internet's Early Civic Promise

  • The early internet (late 2000s–early 2010s) felt genuinely hopeful and enabled real-world political revolutions.
  • Garrett Graff shows how tools like Twitter and Facebook helped organizers coordinate protests and topple dictators during the Arab Spring.
INSIGHT

Algorithms Reward Outrage

  • Social platforms shifted from user-driven to algorithm-driven feeds to maximize ad revenue.
  • Graff explains that algorithms learned that enraging content increases time on site, which drove polarization and amplification of anger.
ANECDOTE

Facebook's Role In Myanmar's Tragedy

  • In Myanmar Facebook functioned as the de facto internet and failed to police local hate speech.
  • A UN investigation concluded Facebook "helped pour gasoline on this bonfire" and contributed to atrocities against the Rohingya.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app