As someone with very little surface area with X, Instagram and TikTok, this all seems so profoundly stupid, but sadly with very real consequences through the effects on politics. I wonder what the future holds for democratic decisions when an increasing fraction of voters have such a low-quality media diet. Populists with dismal aptitude for actual governing are having a field day.
Concerning Larry Ellison - I believe what he's building could be much more influential in the media space than anything that Elon Musk has ever done. He strikes me as a highly intelligent, absolutely ruthless kind of person who is not given to make such stupid mistakes like Elon keeps on making in public.
The flip side is that as a megarich guy, Ellison has a very material stake in the stability of the existing system, and he's not totally beholden to profitability either. Kyla presents Ellison as the problem, but he could just as easily be the solution as well. Hard to say.
That depends on what you’re referring to by “stability”. For example, one might say that we’re in an incredibly unstable time right now, but it’s an Excellent time to be rich, and the rich have somewhat unprecedented power to literally bribe the government. So it’s a balance between social stability and the power of the wealthy, and they seem to be willing to leverage a significant amount of social instability in order to gain more power. The equilibrium point is not located at “very stable”.
Great article as always Kyla! I loved your point at the end about focusing on the fact that this is a structural economic problem rather than just a media misinformation problem, and it’s never going to be solved on a case-by-case basis. I am once again convinced that I should delete my socials once and for all… maybe this time it will stick.
For anyone interested in learning about Larry Ellison’s media empire in much greater detail, check out the Drey Dossier (here on Substack).
Platforms will always inherently profit off of greater attention, but today, more than ever, I think there is an appetite and opportunity for a "good platform" that puts user health and true connection over ragebait and profits.
It of course won't be at the megascale of a Meta or X but there is still inherent value to sharing our stories with each other.
That was the “money quote” for me too. If only she were Elon Musk and could mobilize millions of followers, manipulate the algorithm and buy government regulators.
I'm quite concerned about the "delete your socials" advice. Seems like it has the potential to create adverse selection amongst the remaining social media users.
I was pleased to hear Morris (he of Strength in Numbers here on Substack), in conversation with Paul Krugman, say that he no longer does social media. Kyla is absolutely right that it's a structure/incentives problem, not a contents problem. Bottom line, however, depriving them the eyeballs is the only thing that will make a difference.
Love this as always Kyla. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I am surprised that there hasn't been a push already to formalise digital literacy education in High Schools / Colleges already. Not digital literacy like, how to use Microsoft Word, but exactly what you describe. Helping people understand media systems and how they've been warped, and what impact that has on your life. Surely that is the best education someone can have in today's world
This is the job of librarians and “information professionals”. As a specialized librarian who was once a public school educator, we need to be given more visible roles. I try to be an advocate for our services and profession both at work and when I’m off the clock. And because I’m a film and media librarian, I can’t help but share a new word I discovered from the new FX show “The Lowdown”: ‘truthstorian’. Everyone can be one. But you need someone to teach you a few things, and that’s where institutional knowledge comes into play.
I was going to add that my young kids (12-16) are way better at reading headlines and determining if articles are trustworthy, real, etc, probably because of people like you, than my mother. It's kind of appalling, but I'm thankful because she listens to her sweet grandkids better than her children.
From my experience, some schools are teaching digital literacy, but I'm not sure how widespread that is. I graduated from a good public high school recently (in the past 5 years) and we were taught digital literacy, but I do also think I had exceptionally good teachers
In Europe, at least one nonprofit is bringing working journalists into schools to teach media literacy to kids and students: https://www.lie-detectors.org
we discussed source evaluation using some of the methods on this site: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082320 and whenever we had to write a paper for a class we usually had to do "annotated bibliographies" for a handful of sources where we evaluated their reliability. also, most AP exams require source evaluation (e.g. mentioning how a source might be biased) in the extended response section to get full credit for the written questions. i distinctly remember that being a requirement for AP US History which is probably one of the most common AP classes across the country
i'm not sure how they're handling ai and bots though since that's become a bigger thing since i graduated
This is really cool - was there anything more pointed towards social media / news / information ecosystem that was more geared towards real life as opposed to a class? Like life skills, not history lessons?
(1) Read and reread history. Read a biography of Lincoln if you want to understand how a man of integrity holds a nation together. Hint: He does not do it by hating his opponents.
Read about how empires fall. Learn how authoritarians rally the populace to their side. I like Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer."
(2) Read the books by the authors Kyla listed in this article. Read Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language."
(3) Read newspapers and substacks. Always look for buried ledes. Look for what is left out.
(4) Know and define your values. There is a lot of wisdom literature. C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" is a fun place to start.
(5) Question political rhetoric. Is the speaker appealing to your emotions, or are they making cogent arguments? Do they repeatedly "other" groups of people as enemies. Are they accumulating power and lining their own pockets at the same time.
(6) Don't fall for arguments based on "whataboutism" or ad hominem attacks.
I can't help but add that the 'Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" decision added another level of corruption to the information system, providing companies (or rather the individuals who own them) unlimited influence. These individuals, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Murdoch and the like have the money to legally bribe policy makers and the technogy to spread their ideologies with bots and AI.
They influence legal and policy decisions, and democracy fades to whatever cluster fuck we are in now. Not a good look.
Wonderful piece. One thing that struck me: your hierarchy of information only includes digital information. So, e.g., there’s no mention of sensation or perception in the physical world—an important informational “ground” (in multiple senses) for most of us humans, and a key differentiator between us and bots (and AI, too, FWIW). Also, your structure implies a broadly inferential flow, starting from raw data and moving “up” toward understanding and wisdom. But that’s not how human thinking typically works in the wild. The data we find are, in part, a function of what we look for. Each of us is a constitutive component of the media we consume at every level and at every moment. Therein lies our precarity but also our opportunity.
Epistemic collapse is at the core of everything. Even reading this, I'm not sure what you do about it. Dismantle the social media companies. Turn antitrust on media. Tear up the telecommunications act. I doubt that's a day one agenda for a Democratic president in an optimistic scenario in 3 years. We should all lock arms and walk hand in hand off the platforms.
Kyla, it is easy to get on board with the message you are conveying, as you deeply understand both the issues and the severity of the challange. So what do we do about it? Who are the leaders fighting back, and how do we join in? Please keep up the good work. You are an amazingly good communicator. Thanks
Good outline of the problem. What would McLuhan say? Contemplating my social media experiences, I realized that the initial problem is that the "foreground" statements were divorced from any "background" content. This promotes a solipsism where the "background" is filled in by individual personal experience to create a wild narrative precluding any judgement of general meaning, just a transference to an object innocent of one's pre-existing dread or desire. Any path to meaning or wisdom is cut off, while scapegoats and fetishes thrive. Just turn off your TV. I'm surprised you didn't mention Noam Chomsky or Rene Girard. Thank you! So far, my meditation on these experiences is more limited.
Honest observation, as I am not a partisan. But almost all of your examples of people doing bad things are of those on one side of the political spectrum. I noticed this for each of the last several posts you've made.
It would be surprising to me if this were fully representative / the full picture of the sources of our problem(s). A general lack of examples of where folks on the other end of the spectrum might also be causing trouble in the body politic increases my skepticism of your broader conclusions. In case helpful.
There are no benevolent billionaires buying or owning media conglomerates who intend to let reporters be reporters. Larry Ellison has an agenda, it’s scary and he happens to be sharply right wing. Like Murdoch. Sinclair. Who on the ‘left’ is Kyla supposed to call out who also has the billions to impose their worldview? And the differences of that worldview on rights and corruption are stark (you won’t find anyone left of hard right publicly saying they don’t care about $50k bribes).
Having that much money/power is inherently corrosive to the human soul, ergo, there is no such thing as a good billionaire. People with an inclination to be socially cooperative (ie, most people) tend not to have the "Dark Triad"-esque traits required to amass that much ill-gotten wealth.
One thing that's tricky here is that quite a few of the billionaires mentioned here used to be considered on the liberal side. Zuckerberg for example used to do lip service at least to left values. In the old days of 10 years ago, Musk was a darling of the left because he was leading the eco-fight. In the past few years they've swung hard towards Trump. Steven Levy documents this shift in Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-politics-shift/
As a member of the boomer generation I appreciate this sort of analysis. The information / attention economy, the technology of bots driving attention and opinions, and the influence of investment and ownership wagging the tail of our discourse; these are fundamentals we need to understand.
The rapid evolution of information technology over the past 30 years has created a diverse range of understanding of its influence, between and within generations. We need this knowledge to be wise citizens, while being discriminating consumers of information. Thanks
Loved this whole piece. I’ve been mulling over how while the “information environment is designed to maximize conflict,” as Scanlon puts it, the technologies being designed and put in front of consumers are all made to ease discomfort. I’m thinking about AI tools that can do your homework/write your cover letters/solve your problems; check-out counters at restaurants that avoid any human interaction; AirPods that can translate languages for you. There is something interesting to unpack in the gulf between the intended maximized conflict of our political discourse, and the intended maximized comfort of our daily lives.
Great piece. The structural issues are very real. I wrote this in a note recently that if we really want to change the public discourse at a structural level, we don't try and regulate speech, we regulate what speech you can make money off. If we altered what was acceptable speech for monetization, then audience aggregation on a platform might be be worthwhile. If we said that you can't insert ads into any news feed driven by an algorithm that optimizes for attention, then it instantly kills the business model that runs TikTok. If you make harvesting attention not an economically viable pursuit, it changes the underlying structure of information.
Thank you for writing this article, it’s one of those rare pieces that I feel like I can share with my close family members who may not agree with me on everything. If the US has one unifying thing right now, it’s either “the rent is too damn high” or “information sucks to obtain”. It’s kinda funny in a sad way that we can almost all agree that the thing that makes us not agree (social media, bot farms, etc) is a bad thing.
As someone with very little surface area with X, Instagram and TikTok, this all seems so profoundly stupid, but sadly with very real consequences through the effects on politics. I wonder what the future holds for democratic decisions when an increasing fraction of voters have such a low-quality media diet. Populists with dismal aptitude for actual governing are having a field day.
Concerning Larry Ellison - I believe what he's building could be much more influential in the media space than anything that Elon Musk has ever done. He strikes me as a highly intelligent, absolutely ruthless kind of person who is not given to make such stupid mistakes like Elon keeps on making in public.
Simon P. agrees with Simon V.
(I am not a bot I promise!!1!1)
The flip side is that as a megarich guy, Ellison has a very material stake in the stability of the existing system, and he's not totally beholden to profitability either. Kyla presents Ellison as the problem, but he could just as easily be the solution as well. Hard to say.
That depends on what you’re referring to by “stability”. For example, one might say that we’re in an incredibly unstable time right now, but it’s an Excellent time to be rich, and the rich have somewhat unprecedented power to literally bribe the government. So it’s a balance between social stability and the power of the wealthy, and they seem to be willing to leverage a significant amount of social instability in order to gain more power. The equilibrium point is not located at “very stable”.
Great article as always Kyla! I loved your point at the end about focusing on the fact that this is a structural economic problem rather than just a media misinformation problem, and it’s never going to be solved on a case-by-case basis. I am once again convinced that I should delete my socials once and for all… maybe this time it will stick.
For anyone interested in learning about Larry Ellison’s media empire in much greater detail, check out the Drey Dossier (here on Substack).
Platforms will always inherently profit off of greater attention, but today, more than ever, I think there is an appetite and opportunity for a "good platform" that puts user health and true connection over ragebait and profits.
It of course won't be at the megascale of a Meta or X but there is still inherent value to sharing our stories with each other.
Thank you!
That was the “money quote” for me too. If only she were Elon Musk and could mobilize millions of followers, manipulate the algorithm and buy government regulators.
I'm quite concerned about the "delete your socials" advice. Seems like it has the potential to create adverse selection amongst the remaining social media users.
I was pleased to hear Morris (he of Strength in Numbers here on Substack), in conversation with Paul Krugman, say that he no longer does social media. Kyla is absolutely right that it's a structure/incentives problem, not a contents problem. Bottom line, however, depriving them the eyeballs is the only thing that will make a difference.
You could just use an ad blocker.
Love this as always Kyla. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I am surprised that there hasn't been a push already to formalise digital literacy education in High Schools / Colleges already. Not digital literacy like, how to use Microsoft Word, but exactly what you describe. Helping people understand media systems and how they've been warped, and what impact that has on your life. Surely that is the best education someone can have in today's world
This is the job of librarians and “information professionals”. As a specialized librarian who was once a public school educator, we need to be given more visible roles. I try to be an advocate for our services and profession both at work and when I’m off the clock. And because I’m a film and media librarian, I can’t help but share a new word I discovered from the new FX show “The Lowdown”: ‘truthstorian’. Everyone can be one. But you need someone to teach you a few things, and that’s where institutional knowledge comes into play.
I was going to add that my young kids (12-16) are way better at reading headlines and determining if articles are trustworthy, real, etc, probably because of people like you, than my mother. It's kind of appalling, but I'm thankful because she listens to her sweet grandkids better than her children.
Digital literacy programs would also be helpful in the community, especially among the retired.
From my experience, some schools are teaching digital literacy, but I'm not sure how widespread that is. I graduated from a good public high school recently (in the past 5 years) and we were taught digital literacy, but I do also think I had exceptionally good teachers
In Europe, at least one nonprofit is bringing working journalists into schools to teach media literacy to kids and students: https://www.lie-detectors.org
Seems like an amazing organization, thank you for the link, have forwarded to friends with school age children
Interesting! Very curious to hear what sort of stuff was being taught?
we discussed source evaluation using some of the methods on this site: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082320 and whenever we had to write a paper for a class we usually had to do "annotated bibliographies" for a handful of sources where we evaluated their reliability. also, most AP exams require source evaluation (e.g. mentioning how a source might be biased) in the extended response section to get full credit for the written questions. i distinctly remember that being a requirement for AP US History which is probably one of the most common AP classes across the country
i'm not sure how they're handling ai and bots though since that's become a bigger thing since i graduated
This is really cool - was there anything more pointed towards social media / news / information ecosystem that was more geared towards real life as opposed to a class? Like life skills, not history lessons?
Here’s an example of sample assignments using generative AI from the Office of the Superintendent here in Washington State: https://ospi.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/2024-03/sample-ai-assignment-classroom-level-matrix-educators.pdf
What to do, some thoughts:
(1) Read and reread history. Read a biography of Lincoln if you want to understand how a man of integrity holds a nation together. Hint: He does not do it by hating his opponents.
Read about how empires fall. Learn how authoritarians rally the populace to their side. I like Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer."
(2) Read the books by the authors Kyla listed in this article. Read Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language."
(3) Read newspapers and substacks. Always look for buried ledes. Look for what is left out.
(4) Know and define your values. There is a lot of wisdom literature. C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" is a fun place to start.
(5) Question political rhetoric. Is the speaker appealing to your emotions, or are they making cogent arguments? Do they repeatedly "other" groups of people as enemies. Are they accumulating power and lining their own pockets at the same time.
(6) Don't fall for arguments based on "whataboutism" or ad hominem attacks.
Thanks for the thoughtful and profound analysis.
I can't help but add that the 'Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" decision added another level of corruption to the information system, providing companies (or rather the individuals who own them) unlimited influence. These individuals, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Murdoch and the like have the money to legally bribe policy makers and the technogy to spread their ideologies with bots and AI.
They influence legal and policy decisions, and democracy fades to whatever cluster fuck we are in now. Not a good look.
Keep up the good work
Wonderful piece. One thing that struck me: your hierarchy of information only includes digital information. So, e.g., there’s no mention of sensation or perception in the physical world—an important informational “ground” (in multiple senses) for most of us humans, and a key differentiator between us and bots (and AI, too, FWIW). Also, your structure implies a broadly inferential flow, starting from raw data and moving “up” toward understanding and wisdom. But that’s not how human thinking typically works in the wild. The data we find are, in part, a function of what we look for. Each of us is a constitutive component of the media we consume at every level and at every moment. Therein lies our precarity but also our opportunity.
Epistemic collapse is at the core of everything. Even reading this, I'm not sure what you do about it. Dismantle the social media companies. Turn antitrust on media. Tear up the telecommunications act. I doubt that's a day one agenda for a Democratic president in an optimistic scenario in 3 years. We should all lock arms and walk hand in hand off the platforms.
Kyla, it is easy to get on board with the message you are conveying, as you deeply understand both the issues and the severity of the challange. So what do we do about it? Who are the leaders fighting back, and how do we join in? Please keep up the good work. You are an amazingly good communicator. Thanks
Good outline of the problem. What would McLuhan say? Contemplating my social media experiences, I realized that the initial problem is that the "foreground" statements were divorced from any "background" content. This promotes a solipsism where the "background" is filled in by individual personal experience to create a wild narrative precluding any judgement of general meaning, just a transference to an object innocent of one's pre-existing dread or desire. Any path to meaning or wisdom is cut off, while scapegoats and fetishes thrive. Just turn off your TV. I'm surprised you didn't mention Noam Chomsky or Rene Girard. Thank you! So far, my meditation on these experiences is more limited.
Good insight
Check out The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff which focused on the financialization of personal data and info
Great book. Techno-Feudalism is another salient take.
Honest observation, as I am not a partisan. But almost all of your examples of people doing bad things are of those on one side of the political spectrum. I noticed this for each of the last several posts you've made.
It would be surprising to me if this were fully representative / the full picture of the sources of our problem(s). A general lack of examples of where folks on the other end of the spectrum might also be causing trouble in the body politic increases my skepticism of your broader conclusions. In case helpful.
There are no benevolent billionaires buying or owning media conglomerates who intend to let reporters be reporters. Larry Ellison has an agenda, it’s scary and he happens to be sharply right wing. Like Murdoch. Sinclair. Who on the ‘left’ is Kyla supposed to call out who also has the billions to impose their worldview? And the differences of that worldview on rights and corruption are stark (you won’t find anyone left of hard right publicly saying they don’t care about $50k bribes).
Having that much money/power is inherently corrosive to the human soul, ergo, there is no such thing as a good billionaire. People with an inclination to be socially cooperative (ie, most people) tend not to have the "Dark Triad"-esque traits required to amass that much ill-gotten wealth.
Brian Roberts would be a place to start.
One thing that's tricky here is that quite a few of the billionaires mentioned here used to be considered on the liberal side. Zuckerberg for example used to do lip service at least to left values. In the old days of 10 years ago, Musk was a darling of the left because he was leading the eco-fight. In the past few years they've swung hard towards Trump. Steven Levy documents this shift in Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-politics-shift/
As a member of the boomer generation I appreciate this sort of analysis. The information / attention economy, the technology of bots driving attention and opinions, and the influence of investment and ownership wagging the tail of our discourse; these are fundamentals we need to understand.
The rapid evolution of information technology over the past 30 years has created a diverse range of understanding of its influence, between and within generations. We need this knowledge to be wise citizens, while being discriminating consumers of information. Thanks
Loved this whole piece. I’ve been mulling over how while the “information environment is designed to maximize conflict,” as Scanlon puts it, the technologies being designed and put in front of consumers are all made to ease discomfort. I’m thinking about AI tools that can do your homework/write your cover letters/solve your problems; check-out counters at restaurants that avoid any human interaction; AirPods that can translate languages for you. There is something interesting to unpack in the gulf between the intended maximized conflict of our political discourse, and the intended maximized comfort of our daily lives.
Great piece. The structural issues are very real. I wrote this in a note recently that if we really want to change the public discourse at a structural level, we don't try and regulate speech, we regulate what speech you can make money off. If we altered what was acceptable speech for monetization, then audience aggregation on a platform might be be worthwhile. If we said that you can't insert ads into any news feed driven by an algorithm that optimizes for attention, then it instantly kills the business model that runs TikTok. If you make harvesting attention not an economically viable pursuit, it changes the underlying structure of information.
Can you write an article about what we can do to fix this???
Thank you for writing this article, it’s one of those rare pieces that I feel like I can share with my close family members who may not agree with me on everything. If the US has one unifying thing right now, it’s either “the rent is too damn high” or “information sucks to obtain”. It’s kinda funny in a sad way that we can almost all agree that the thing that makes us not agree (social media, bot farms, etc) is a bad thing.