All posts tagged "social media"

Trump isn't the gravest threat to our democracy — it's something even less human

Some data points for your consideration:

Last Saturday in Chicago’s affluent Old Irving Park neighborhood, Donald Trump’s secret, masked police violently pulled a 67‑year‑old U.S. citizen — a member of a local running club returning to his home from a run — out of his car and threw him to the street, where they assaulted him with such force that they broke six ribs and left him with internal bleeding.
Trump is openly taking bribes, publicly ordering political prosecutions, murdering people in naked violation of both US and international law, all while claiming the Supreme Court gave him absolute immunity from prosecution for any crime.
An MIT study finds that lies presented as news travel six times faster across social media than truths.
While more than 75 percent of Americans trusted the news 50 years ago, today that number is a mere 28 percent, with only 8 percent of Republicans believing what they see or read in mainstream outlets.

These are all the same story, and they all largely derive from a single source, a mind poison that was introduced into the American (and world) mindstream in a big way about two decades ago.

It’s called the algorithm, and if we’re to survive as a republic it must be regulated the same way we regulate anything else that produces addictive, compulsive behavior that twists and distorts people’s lives.

Possibly the greatest threat to humanity at this moment is the algorithm.

It can twist and wreck people’s minds and lives — tear apart families and destroy countries — in a way that can be more rapid and more powerful than heroin, cocaine, or fentanyl. And yet it is completely unregulated.

An algorithm is a software program/system that inserts itself between humans as we attempt to communicate with each other. It decides which communications are important and which are not, which communications will be shared and which will not, what we will see or learn and what we will not.

As a result, in a nation where 48 percent of citizens get much or most of their news from social media, the algorithms driving social media sites ultimately decide which direction society will move as a result of the shared information they encourage or suppress across society.

When you log onto social media and read your “feed,” you’re not seeing (in most cases) what was most recently posted by the people you “follow.” While some of that’s there, the algorithm also feeds you other posts it thinks you’ll like based on your past behavior, so as to increase your “engagement,” aka the amount of time you spend on the site and thus the number of advertisements you will view.

As a result, your attention is continually tweaked, led, and fine-tuned to reflect the goal of the algorithm’s programmers. Click on a post about voting, for example, and the algorithm then leads you to election denial, from there to climate denial, from there to Qanon.

Next stop, radicalization or paralysis. But at least you stayed along for the ride and viewed a lot of ads in the process.

Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t follow the rules that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution have built into our cultures, religions, and political systems.

They don’t ask themselves, “Is this true?” or “Will this information help or hurt this individual or humanity?”

Instead, the algorithms’ main purpose is to make more money for the billionaires who own the social media platforms.

If telling you that, as Trump recently said, climate change “may affect us in 300 years” makes for more engagement (and more profit for the social media site) than does telling the truth about fossil fuels, it will get pushed into more and more minds.

No matter that such lies literally threaten human society short-term and possibly the survival of the human race long-term.

As Jaron Lanier told the Guardian:

“People survive by passing information between themselves. We’re putting that fundamental quality of humanness through a process with an inherent incentive for corruption and degradation. The fundamental drama of this period is whether we can figure out how to survive properly with those elements or not.”

Those of a certain age or students of the advertising business may remember when Vance Packard’s book The Hidden Persuaders set off a panic across America in the 1960s, claiming that movies and TV shows were inserting micro-bursts of advertisements that flew below the radar of consciousness but nevertheless changed behavior.

The classic example was popcorn flashing on movie screens with the words “Buy Now!” It provoked a panic in Congress and multiple attempts at legislation to outlaw it before the practice was debunked as ineffective.

But algorithms are far from ineffective. They’re arguably one of the most powerful forces on the planet today.

The premise of several books, most famously Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is that the collection of massive amounts of data about each of us — then massaged and used by “automated” algorithms to increase our engagement — is actually a high-tech form of old fashioned but extremely effective thought control.

She argues that these companies are “intervening in our experience to shape our behavior in ways that favor surveillance capitalists’ commercial outcomes. New automated protocols are designed to influence and modify human behavior at scale as the means of production is subordinated to a new and more complex means of behavior modification.” (Emphasis hers.)

She notes that “only a few decades ago US society denounced mass behavior-modification techniques as unacceptable threats to individual autonomy and the democratic order.” Today, however, “the same practices meet little resistance or even discussion as they are routinely and pervasively deployed” to meet the financial goals of those engaging in surveillance capitalism.

This is such a powerful system for modifying our perspectives and behaviors, she argues, that it intervenes in or interferes with our “elemental right to the future tense, which accounts for the individual’s ability to imagine, intend, promise, and construct a future.” (Emphasis hers.)

Social media companies have claimed that their algorithms are intellectual properties, inventions, and trade secrets, all things that fall under the rubric of laws designed to advance and protect intellectual property and commerce.

In my book The Hidden History of Big Brother: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy, I argue that algorithms should be open-source and thus publicly available for examination.

The reason so many algorithms are so toxic is because they are fine-tuned or adjusted to maximize engagement to benefit advertisers, who then pay the social media company, with little or no consideration for their impact on individuals or society.

Even more insidious, a billionaire social media company owner with a political agenda can program his algorithm to promote a particular politician, point of view, or a story that might help or destroy a politician or political party. Or even destroy a nation’s citizens’ faith in their government, media, or in democracy itself.

One way to get this under control is to require social media companies to ditch the algorithm and its associated advertising revenue model, and work instead on a subscription model with a modest fee.

Nigel Peacock and I saw this at work for the nearly two decades that we ran over 20 forums on CompuServe back in the 1980s and ’90s. Everybody there paid a membership fee to CompuServe and there was no advertising, so we had no incentive to try to manipulate their experience beyond normal moderation. There was no algorithm driving the show.

Replacing secret algorithms with subscriptions — or requiring they be publicly available in plain English so everybody can see how they’re being manipulated — would reduce the amount of screen time and the level of “screen addiction” so many people experience.

There’s an absolute consensus among both social scientists, psychologists, and political scientists that reducing algorithm-driven screen addiction would be a good thing for both individual mental health and the cohesion and health of our society.

But lacking a change in business model, the unique power social media holds to change behavior for good or ill — from Twitter spreading the Arab Spring, to Facebook provoking a mass slaughter in Myanmar, to both helping Russia elect Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 — cries out for regulation, transparency, or, preferably, both.

Three years ago, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Yvette Clarke, (D-NY) introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022, which would do just that.

“Too often, Big Tech’s algorithms put profits before people, from negatively impacting young people’s mental health, to discriminating against people based on race, ethnicity, or gender, and everything in between,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), a co-sponsor of the legislation.

“It is long past time,” she added, “for the American public and policymakers to get a look under the hood and see how these algorithms are being used and what next steps need to be taken to protect consumers.”

And — let’s not forget — to protect our democracy, our nation, and our planet.

The morbidly rich people who own our social media, focused more on adding more billions to their money bins than the consequences of their algorithms, don’t seem particularly concerned about these issues. Instead, they appear to be intentionally tweaking their algorithms to promote content that agrees with their political views and economic interests (although we can’t be sure because they keep them secret).

But it’s a safe bet that without the “enraging effect” of algorithmic amplification of outrage and hate, Donald Trump would never have become president, most Americans wouldn’t support brutal ICE tactics out of fear of brown people, and we wouldn’t today live in a nation where one in five households have stopped speaking with each other because of politics.

Right now, the Trump administration and Republican politicians don’t want to touch this subject because they believe Zuckerberg, Musk, and others who control the algorithms are using them to the GOP’s advantage.

But that sword can cut both ways, when public outrage reaches the point where it’s more profitable for the tech billionaires to promote anger against those in power than those currently on the outside.

It’s way past time to end the algorithmic manipulation of the American mind.

Pass it along (because the algorithm probably won’t).

MAGA senator lights up 'Zuckerberg and his friends' after hearing snub

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called out Big Tech, including Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and other social platform leaders who refuse to show up and discuss the companies' alleged use of AI chatbots exploiting children, pushing some to self-harm and suicide.

"Zuckerberg and his friends at Meta rejected my invitation to appear before the Senate and answer for the harms caused by their AI chatbots. So I gave the floor to the brave parents of chatbot victims. Thank you for revealing the ugly truth about profit-loving Big Tech," Hawley said during a Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Hawley launched a probe into Meta in August, seeking more information about its use of AI chatbots and children. He accused the companies of dodging responsibility.

"They're not at the table," he said. "They don't want any part of this conversation because they don't want any accountability. They want to keep on doing exactly what they have been doing which is designing products that engage users in every imaginable way, including the grooming of children, the sexualization of children, the exploitation of children — anything to lure the children in, to hold their attention, to get as much data from them as possible, to treat them as products to be strip mined and then to be discarded when they're finished with them."

"The testimony that you're going to hear is not pleasant, but it is the truth," he said. "And it's time that the country heard the truth about what these companies are doing, about what these chatbots are engaged in, about the harms that are being inflicted on our children and for one reason only, I can state it in one word: profit. Profit is what motivates these companies to do what they're doing. Don't be fooled, they know exactly what is going on."

Two whistleblowers from Meta testified last week "that Meta knows absolutely that its platforms harm children," Hawley said.

He argued that Meta was suppressing studies that show its platforms harm children in favor of its financial stake in the technology.

"What's the goal across all these platforms?... It is engagement that leads to profit," he said.

The FBI is investigating AI child sex abuse material online, Director Kash Patel said Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Hawley said some children were led to suicide by the products made by these companies and their parents would testify to their experiences.

"And what are the companies doing about it? Nothing. Not a thing," he said.

Social media companies have mainly remained silent in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing last week, the New York Times reports. The suspected shooter was accused by President Donald Trump, who has his own social media network, as "radicalized on the internet." Elon Musk, who owns X, is the only one to respond, posting divisive information in the wake of the assassination.

Zuckerberg & his friends at Meta rejected my invitation to appear before the Senate and answer for the harms caused by their AI chatbots.

So I gave the floor to the brave parents of chatbot victims.

Thank you for revealing the ugly truth about profit-loving Big Tech pic.twitter.com/zd0wTFBIsp
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 16, 2025

'Get used to it': DHS snaps as art world outraged work used to push MAGA agenda

The Department of Homeland Security clapped back Tuesday at a Washington Post report about well-known artists unhappy that the Trump administration was appropriating their work to promote white "American heritage."

"Dear, @washingtonpost, add this one to your story. This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it," DHS posted to X, along with the painting "The Birth of Old Glory" by Edward Percy Morgan.

DHS posted three other paintings this month by contemporary artists Thomas Kinkaide and Morgan Weistling, and 19th-century painter John Gast. According to the report, the artwork depicted "idealized images of American life" that are "bookended by posts cheering the administration’s deportation campaign."

The Kinkaide Family Foundation sent the department a cease-and-desist letter demanding it stop using the artist's image titled “Morning Pledge."

The painting depicts children walking to a schoolhouse that's flying an American Flag. DHS added “Protect the Homeland" to the post.

“Like many of you, we were deeply troubled to see this image used to promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS, as this is antithetical to our mission,” the foundation said in a statement it posted online. “We stand firmly with our communities who have been threatened and targeted by DHS.”

On his official website, Weistling protested the use of his work, "A prayer for new life," depicting a pioneer couple in a covered wagon, writing, “Attention: The recent DHS post on social media using a painting of mine that I painted a few years ago was used without my permission.”

Gast's “American Progress,” painted in 1872, depicts white settlers "bathed in sunlight" moving onto Native American land. DHS added, "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending."

Scholars say the painting was used to illustrate "the concept of 'Manifest Destiny' in American history textbooks," according to the report.

“That the Department of Homeland Security is using the picture for this purpose is so ironic,” Princeton University professor Martha Sandweiss told The Post. “This is an image that’s about the invasion of homelands. When we look at this picture, we’re in the homeland, the imagined homeland of many, many Native tribes. … This is not an American homeland that we’re looking at to be defended; this is an American invasion of other people’s homelands.”

Read The Washington Post article here.

Mike Lee takes down Minneapolis murder posts — but bad blood boils in Congress

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) finally bowed to pressure on Tuesday and removed social media posts in which he appeared to mock the murder of a prominent Minnesota Democrat and her husband and the wounding of another state Democrat and his wife.

“I have deleted it,” Lee told Raw Story at the U.S. Capitol, as senators emerged from a briefing on safety and security in light of the Minneapolis shootings.

Lee said he deleted the post after “a good conversation with my friend Amy Klobuchar this morning,” referring to the senior Democratic senator from Minnesota, who spoke out on the issue.

“It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee said. “We're good friends. I took it down.”

Lee had previously avoided answering questions on the matter.

In Minneapolis on Saturday, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were shot dead and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman were wounded by a gunman who came to their homes, dressed as a police officer.

The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was charged with murder. Law enforcement said Boelter visited other lawmakers’ homes and compiled a list of targets.

Boelter’s rightwing views and ties have been widely reported, including that he voted for Trump.

Nonetheless, in posts to X on Sunday, Lee wrote, "This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way,” and "Nightmare on Waltz Street,” the latter a misspelled reference to Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president last year.

Subjected to a barrage of disapproval, Lee was initially unrepentant.

Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said President Donald Trump should “demand that Mike Lee takes down his disgusting tweet on X about the Minnesota shootings.”

“I asked [Lee] to do it yesterday,” Schumer added. “Well, he wouldn't listen to me.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) confronted Lee on Monday.

“Mostly, I think he was just sort of shocked to have me talking to him,” Smith said on Tuesday, adding that Lee “did not really seem sorry.”

On Tuesday afternoon, both posts had disappeared.

‘Nobody’s entirely safe’

The Senate continues to wrestle with Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a package of spending and tax cuts, but on Tuesday the security briefing occupied minds. Asked if lawmakers felt safe in the Capitol and in their states after the Minneapolis shootings, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC) chose to be laconic.

“Nobody’s entirely safe,” he told Raw Story. “Everybody should be on guard. I am.”

Schumer was more passionate.

“When political opponents are treated like enemies, when leaders encourage the kind of protest that can lead to violence, it increases that violence,” the New Yorker told reporters.

“So it's the responsibility of all leaders, especially President Trump, to not just unequivocally condemn hatred, but to stop the violent and regressive language against political opponents.”

Trump has repeatedly abused Walz, when asked if he will offer support.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) accused Democrats of stoking hatred themselves.

“When they go out there publicly [and] say Republicans are limiting Social Security, limiting Medicaid, limiting benefits to Americans, they're fanning the hatred of Republicans,” Moreno told reporters, nodding to debate over the GOP spending measure.

“By the way, Chuck Schumer is the same guy that stood in front of the Supreme Court and said that the Supreme Court justices are going to see whatever they deserve.”

In 2020, Schumer said he regretted remarks about justices then viewed as likely to remove the federal right to abortion, but did not apologize.

Moreno said Schumer had “zero credibility on this topic. Zero. He's responsible for the vast majority of inflammatory rhetoric that comes from the other side of the aisle. And we both have to stop it. We both have to say, ‘Look, this is what you believe. This what we believe, and do it in a respectful way.’”

Moreno also claimed Democrats were “7,000 times” more responsible for escalating tensions, adding: “The Democrats have called Trump Hitler, a fascist authoritarian.”

Moreno accused reporters of lacking credibility on the issue. He did not note that Trump’s own vice president, JD Vance, famously called him “America’s Hitler.”

‘Attacks on democracy’

Schumer described “a dramatic increase in threats against senators, congressmen, public officials and throughout America.

“And these are not just attacks on individuals, but on democracy, on our way of life, on what we believe in, and an attempt to intimidate people not to do their jobs, not to run for office.

“It's gross, it's disgusting, we must take immediate steps to ensure the safety of members, and that includes increased funding for the Capitol Police. And there was agreement in our meeting between Democrats and Republicans that we ought to have that increased funding.”

Chuck Schumer speaks on Capitol Hill. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Sen. John Hoeven (R–ND) told Raw Story his “biggest takeaway” from Tuesday’s briefing was that “the Senate has some funding to help … if [senators] want to put cameras or other security equipment in place.

“And beyond that, people can use … the dollars we raise, we can use that for security purposes too. So whether to go beyond that or not at this point, I don't know, and it was more just information about what happened, and what folks could do and those kinds of things.”

Raw Story asked if Hoeven thought threats to lawmakers were the result of heated rhetoric.

He said: “That's always part of it. Look, how do we keep the debate as a debate and not get to the point where people are going beyond just speech and expressing opinions, kind of take the temperature down on those. That's always an important part of this.

“And members obviously have to show leadership in that regard.”

Raw Story asked about charges that Trump is worsening tensions.

“You’ve got to separate the underlying logic of what he's saying versus, you know, the political,” Hoeven said. “In other words, sure, Democrats are going to say that because they're in the blue states, so they're going to say they have a different opinion.”

Trump’s decision to target Democratic-run cities for mass deportation of undocumented migrants, thus stoking angry protests, was just logical, Hoeven claimed.

“Actually, if you look at it, it's a statement of fact. I mean, in terms of where most of the illegal immigrants are, it's in those larger cities in the blue states, because they're sanctuary cities. So it's just basic logic, and [Democrats are] actually politicized.

“When they say, ‘Oh, he's making a political statement.’ Well, it's actually a logical statement. But regardless, there's going to be that back and forth. The key is you keep it within the realm of speech and not resorting to violence.”

Lambasting Republicans as “hypocrites,” Schumer highlighted law enforcement cuts.

“The Trump administration cut the … program aimed to spot lone wolf, [lone] actor violence, violent people, violent extremists,” Schumer said.

“Doesn't that sound exactly what happened in Minnesota? And they're cutting it. It's outrageous, but that's what they do.

“The last top officials at this program that aims to spot … violent domestic extremists were reassigned in the four months that Trump has [been in] office.

“His administration has shrunk the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, from dozens of analysts to fewer than 10 people.

“So here with violence increasing, they are shrinking the number of law enforcement people aimed at trying to prevent that violence from ever occurring.

“Right now we need to give our law enforcement more, not less. It's just totally hypocritical of this administration.

“The dangerous environment isn't spontaneous, however, it's being stoked, often deliberately, by reckless rhetoric coming from some of the most powerful voices in the country.”

Journalist comes clean after explicit videos released online

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, known for his reporting on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, is receiving bipartisan support on social media Friday after coming clean about the online release of private and explicit videos.

Greenwald released a statement on X Friday about the images that he said were published without his knowledge or consent.

"Though we do not know exactly who is responsible, we are close to knowing, and the motive was a maliciously political one," Greenwald wrote.

He continued, "As for the content of the videos: I have no embarrassment or regret about them. The videos depict consenting adults engaged in intimate actions in their private lives. They all display full consensual behavior, harming nobody. Obviously it can be uncomfortable and unpleasant when your private behavior is made public against your will -- that's why the behavior is private in the first place -- but the only wrongdoing here is the criminal and malicious publication of the videos in an attempt to malign perceived political enemies and advance a political agenda."

Journalist Josh Marshall whose 360,000 followers that include prominent Democrats, wrote, "I disagree with and more than disagree with so many things you've said and done over the years, Glenn. But this is 100% your own business. And I applaud and support your telling everyone that."

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

Author @dbenner83 called Greenwald "one of the greatest heroes of our time; a true journalist in an age of propagandists."

Conservative filmmaker @Cernovich wrote, "Glad that I’ve been out of the loop and missed this. Sorry you’ve been targeted in this way. Showing moral courage is important, because blackmail only works when people live in fear, which is what the powerful want, and demand via other coercive ways."

Another conservative journalist @ElaineAryn posted, "The evil done against Glenn here will backfire severely. Most especially because he’s a good person," while liberal journalist Ed Krassenstein wrote, "So sorry to see this."

A self-described Libertarian, @goddeketal, warned Greenwald, "You should’ve known, ever since Snowden, Assange, and the existence of surveillance tools like Pegasus, that nothing on your device is ever truly private. Given your critical reporting, it’s hard to understand why you’d film such ‘disturbing’ content in the first place."