Many tell us what to think. I ask my readers to be skeptical. Question me and others. 
In my article “It is editor’s fault,” written in 2013, I commented on the endless and fruitless (it is still going on) bargaining in Congress about reforming immigration policy. Then, I asked a tricky question: “Who is more to blame – the Senate or the House?” The right answer was: “The WSJ editorial page editors,” along with their colleagues from the other major media outlets.
I listed the WSJ editors because I submitted that article to them. They were intrigued but declined to publish it because, as they responded, “Your general criticism seems to be with editorials that take a consistent point of view, which I’ll admit is what the WSJ has tried to do going back 124 years.” So, we agreed to disagree. In my view, the editorial formula rooted in the realities of the 19th century is simply obsolete in the 21st century.
All other major media outlets have the same approach; they promote their ideological agenda. As I explained in another article, “None of the American media companies is structured to make money by searching for the truth. None of the mainstream media outlets will talk about it because the concept of truth in the American media is false.
People need the truth to function, not this or that quasi-religious editorial narrative. When the legacy media do not see the money in delivering the truth, all sorts of self-appointed gurus do it on the internet. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to all the dangers of social media.
Scientists missed the elephant in the room
With the Wild West on the internet, the most eloquent demagogues flourish. They sell Brooklyn Bridge and snake oil to an audience sick and tired of the ideological flavors of the messages from highly skilled professionals at renowned media outlets. Dark money from commercial interests or foreign agents has its bonanza on social media platforms. No wonder that the establishments of media and politics complain.
Five reputable scientists examined that situation, and Nature published their dissertation, “Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation.” As the title suggests, the data led the authors to the conclusion that the harms of online misinformation are highly overstated in the media.
They did not find evidence that exposure to misinformation is substantial and growing. They found out that social media platforms’ algorithms do not promote extremist material, but users seek it out on their own. If any given material gains popularity, it could get a boost in the feedback loops. Lastly, they did not find any proof that exposure to misinformation or extremist material on social media has a noticeable correlation with asocial behavior.
Some falsehoods that originated on social media are getting noticed by the mainstream media, but the authors see them as unjustified because, despite some alarming absolute numbers, they consist of only a tiny fraction of the total interactions online.
In their paper, scientists quote articles from The New York Times and The Atlantic as baselessly exaggerating the assumed harms from online misinformation. But contradictory to that, in the conclusions, they take those accusations as valid and “highlight the need for scrutiny of social media features besides algorithms as well as the systemic factors that drive people towards extremism.” They ask for more studies measuring the “demand for false and extremist content and amplification of it by the media and political elites.”
Nature published this paper on June 5, 2024, but received it almost three years earlier, on October 13, 2021. In the text, one can find an echo of the fierce critique that social media, Facebook in particular, received in 2021. At that time, I commented, “Facebook is evil because it is us.” Politicians and pundits disliked that Mark Zuckerberg did not seem sincere when questioned by Congress. My suggestion was that Mr. Zuckerberg should turn the table and “ask politicians in Washington how Facebook prevents them from agreeing on the budget. How does Facebook stop them from fixing our malfunctioning immigration policy? He should ask Democrats how Facebook is an obstacle in making Obamacare work finally. He should ask Republicans how Facebook prevents them from preparing a market-based alternative to Obamacare.”
“Mr. Zuckerberg should tell the lofty elites of media and politics that their inability to solve our problems made our nation vulnerable to undue foreign influence.”
“To journalists, Mr. Zuckerberg should point out that if they did their job right, there would be no politics on Facebook, and whatever might be would not be newsworthy. He should tell them that whatever they dislike on Facebook mirrors America. If they dislike what they see, the mirror is not the problem.”
When looking at misinformation online, scientists analyzed it in abstraction from the broader reality of media and politics. When noticing that many consumers of extremist material actively sought it, our scientists did not ask why. If they did, they would discover the obvious: Americans do not trust The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other legacy media outlets. If the mainstream media were doing their job, online misinformation would be fringe, ergo irrelevant.
Scientists did not notice the elephant in the room, the distrust of the legacy media. Why it is happening is the more important subject to study. But, I suspect it is harder to find the funding for that.
