How Facebook profits from polarization | Yaël Eisenstat

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Lies are more engaging online than truth," says former CIA analyst and diplomat Yaël Eisenstat. "As long as [social media] algorithms' goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poison that plays to our worst instincts and human weaknesses." In this bold talk, Eisenstat explores how social media companies like Facebook incentivize inflammatory content, contributing to a culture of political polarization and mistrust -- and calls on governments to hold these platforms accountable in order to protect civil discourse and democracy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hew with Ted Talks Daily. Today's talk is crucial for these divisive, toxic times that so many of us wish we weren't part of.
0:13.0	Activist and former CIA officer, Yael Eisenstadt, dug into the extreme polarization we find ourselves in, and the way social media platforms profit
0:22.1	from turning us against each other. In her TED 2020 talk, she raises alarm, but she also
0:28.1	offers a way out from the toxicity so we can turn toward healing our societies and bridging
0:32.9	differences instead. Around five years ago, it struck me that I was losing the ability to engage with people
0:42.7	who aren't like-minded.
0:44.7	The idea of discussing hot-button issues with my fellow Americans was starting to give me
0:49.7	more heartburn than the times that I engaged with suspected extremists overseas. It was starting to
0:56.8	leave me feeling more embittered and frustrated. And so just like that, I shifted my entire focus
1:02.7	from global national security threats to trying to understand what was causing this push
1:08.5	towards extreme polarization at home.
1:11.8	As a former CIA officer and diplomat who spent years working on counter-extremism issues,
1:17.6	I started to fear that this was becoming a far greater threat to our democracy than any foreign
1:22.3	adversary. And so I started digging in, and I started speaking out, which eventually led me to being hired at Facebook and ultimately brought me here today to continue warning you about how these platforms are manipulating and radicalizing so many of us and to talk about how to reclaim our public square.
1:43.4	I was a foreign service officer in Kenya just a few years after the September 11th attacks,
1:48.8	and I led what some call hearts and minds campaigns along the Somalia border.
1:53.4	A big part of my job was to build trust with communities deemed the most susceptible to extremist
1:58.8	messaging. I spent hours drinking tea with outspoken anti-Western clerics
2:04.5	and even dialogue with some suspected terrorists.
2:07.6	And while many of these engagements began with mutual suspicion,
2:11.2	I don't recall any of them resulting in shouting or insults.
2:15.0	And in some cases, we even work together on areas of mutual interest.
	...

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