James Brady Quotes

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.

Social media has exacerbated a trend whereby people speak with complete authority on every subject, regardless of how informed they are.

The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.

Part of the problem is that if anybody has a gut reaction about an issue, they can go online and have it backed up. That said, they can also find support for their ideas in the mainstream media - because when the mainstream media gives a so-called balanced view, it's often misleading.

People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.

We only now talk to our own, on Facebook and social media we talk to people, we friend and we like and we follow people who agree with us and rather than engaging with people who disagree with us, we unfollow them, we block them, we non-platform them.

I still strongly feel that a lot of people who participated in Gamergate, who participated in this sort of thing, are doing so because they go into it with - they'll believe the version of events that fits their world view.

We thought the Internet would enlighten everyone, but it's given everyone access to more ignorance, and given ignorant people an opportunity to organize themselves and congregate.

We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie; in industry-sponsored research; in social media's imitation of human connection; in legalese and corporate double-speak.

When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.

There is a danger, increasingly, that we're in a post-fact society where it seems my ignorance is as good as your facts.

When fake news is repeated, it becomes difficult for the public to discern what's real.

Social media has created a digital latticework, but it has also, for some, created abusive commenters, silos, and validation rather than curiosity.

Citizens have long been easily influenced by the opinions of others and sought social proof, but social media have amplified the phenomena to unprecedented heights. As digital devices permeate every aspect of our lives, it has boosted the way in which information can distort truth.

The separation of audience into tribes preferring to reinforce their own views with media of similar ideological stripe makes true debate impossible.

You can convince yourself of just about anything when you want to believe a conspiracy theory.

In the descent from a world of factual discourse into a world of emotions and alternative realities, the first step you take, whether you're the Russian media, whether you're Breitbart, is that you manufacture lots of stuff that isn't true. The second step is that you claim that everyone is like this.

I think there is a danger when it comes to fake news because there is some fake news out there, but there's also a danger when you only hear back to you the beliefs you already have.

Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.

Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.

My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me.

This is in a nutshell, this is what's wrong with our media, and we see that really played out full in this election [2016], where this is undoubtedly the most toxic election that we've had in - certainly in my lifetime.

People nowadays talk about issues as if they're reading lines off a teleprompter. They recite what they read and echo it without thinking. It has become easier to divide people than to unify them, and to blind them than to give them vision. We are no longer unified like a bowl of Cheerios. Instead, we have become as segregated as a box of Lucky Charms. Every day we see the same leprechauns on TV acting like they're the experts of everything.