Radicalization

Once in these groups, it’s easy to become radicalized. This is due to the provocation by the people in them, as well as algorithms constantly feeding you information, a lot of it false; and that information can spread like wildfire. An MIT study states that, on Twitter, fake news travels six times faster than true news, “So, If a user was, for example, anti-vaccine or believed in chemtrails or had indicated to Facebook’s algorithms in some way that they were prone to belief in conspiracy theories, Facebook’s recommendation engine would serve them Pizzagate groups. Eventually, this culminated in a man showing up with a gun, deciding that he was [going to] go liberate the children from the basement of the pizza place that did not have a basement” (Renee Diresta, Stanford Internet Observatory Research Manager). The problem is, once you’ve landed in a place where your news feed is giving you more and more of what you want to hear, reaffirming what you think is fact, you get the false sense that what you see is the overarching truth. If everyone you follow is saying it, and all of your news sources are saying it, it must be legitimate. Now, you may think this is moronic, especially when the aforementioned conspiracy theories come to mind. The truth is, we all fall victim to this, because most of us have little to no control over algorithms. If you have firm progressive views, chances are you’ll be getting mostly, if not completely, progressive news sources with progressive perspectives, “Over time you have the false sense that everyone agrees with you, because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you, and once you’re in that state it turns out you’re easy to be manipulated, same way you would be manipulated by a magician” (Roger McNamee, Facebook Early Investor Venture Capitalist).