Michael Segal Quotes

Politics is always antagonistic and tribalistic. But social media puts us in isolated information bubbles. We're not just disagreeing on politics. We're disagreeing on reality in very fundamental ways.

Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.

Facebook Algorithms have got us all screwed up, where we only listen and talk to people with the same views as us, and I think it's not helping us as a culture to grow.

Today we live in a world now where it is easy to confuse truth and popularity. And you can use money to amplify whatever you believe and get people to believe what is popular is now truthful. And what is not popular may not be truthful.

Facebook is primarily a mechanism for bonding, not bridging. Studies show that in the vast majority of cases, people live in self-made echo chambers on Facebook that reinforce their existing views of the world.

Technology has allowed the creation of media echo chambers, so that a person can reinforce, rather than debate, viewpoints.

With the Internet there is even more fractioning since we are in echo chambers. With so much propaganda it is hard to calm down enough to listen.

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.

The big challenge our society faces is that we live in an increasingly open world with increasingly closed communities. This is also due to the evolution of the Internet, where people only read things that won't challenge their beliefs.

Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best, social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues they face. At its worst, social media also offers 'everyone' an unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without reflection.

Who wants to hear that he is wrong when he can be told that he is right? …. We are losing the ability to change our mind because of our media.

A democracy becomes ungovernable if a substantial portion of the population lives in an alternative reality…. How do you have a rational conversation about President Obama’s policies of he believes that Obama is a spy for Iran.

Facts just don’t mean anything anymore. It’s who shouts the loudest and repeats it the most.

When people read 'Breitbart' every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that.

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

Fake news and rumors thrive online because few verify what's real and always bias towards content that reinforces their own biases.

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.

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.

We live surrounded by people who sound like us, vote like us, spend like us. We get only the news we want to. And then scream into the social media echo chamber that is designed to serve us up information we already like.

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

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.

We live in a world where we don't really hear ideas. We just hear propaganda. That's not just boring. It's also very dangerous.

The Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.