Social media's effect on the culture

John Hawkins writes at PJ Media a post entitled Confessions of a Clickbait Guru. He has some very important things to say about the world of social media and blogging.

Social Media Is A Confirmation Bias Machine: Most people on social networks start by following people that they like, admire, and agree with. Typically, this leads to people receiving more confirmation of what they already believe. If they receive information contrary to what they believe, they will refuse to share it at best or block/mute the person that sent the information they did not agree with at worst. Over time, this tends to lead to an increasingly perfect feedback loop that confirms every bias that people had going in.

...We Don’t Share Facts Anymore: Liberals have always been able to cocoon themselves off in their own little world where they only hear from left-wing news sources. Conservatives used to not have that option because liberal sources were too ever-present. But they do now and they seem to take full advantage of it. What this means is that a hot Trump “scandal” that is everywhere in the liberal media may be laughed off on the Right as a joke, if they even hear about it at all. It worked the exact same way with Obama. The stories covered by the Left and Right are often completely different, and even if they are the same, the spin will be much different. It’s gotten to the point where the Left and Right almost live in parallel realities. Of course, that has dramatically increased the amount of tribalism you see in politics and helps lead to…

...All that being said, I hate to say it, but honesty is much less important than it used to be to the general public. For one thing, people who have an appetite for propaganda can be more interested in intentions than results. The attitude is, “Sure, the outlet might not have gotten the story right, but at least it was on the side of the angels.” Additionally, social media isn’t about credibility, it’s about feeding people what they want. The more people click on something, the more they like it and such, the more the social media algorithms reward it with traffic. So, how do you get someone to click on a story? The honest way to do it is to be very “aggressive” with your headline. By that, I mean that this headline, “Is Robert Mueller Conflicted In Trump Probe?” inspired this headline that we did, “The Fix is In: Special Counsel Robert Mueller Has MASSIVE Conflict of Interest in Trump Probe.” Which one do you think would draw more traffic on Facebook? Number 2? Ding, ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. This sort of aggressiveness has become the rule on social media. The problem is that it can very easily turn into a headline that is so aggressive that it no longer matches the story. That is not a rare occurrence on the web or in the mainstream media.

...Everyone in America seems to love the idea of bipartisan solutions to issues, but it’s hard for anyone to work together when people on both sides of the aisle bend over backward to irritate each other as much as possible on a daily basis.

Read more here.

Is social media trying to change the culture by changing what you can say.

Google's fact-checker does not fact-check Left wing sites, according to Andrew Klavan.
Google is selling: Leftism is truth and right of center is a lie.

On social media, in Hollywood and the News, elites create a fantasy world in which you're the bad guy. If you are not allowed to say things, when you discover the truth, you are in danger of becoming part of the AltRight, because they are the only ones who are saying these truths (that blacks commit homicides at seven times the rate of whites, that men and women are different, that capitalist societies are better than communist ones, that Islamists create most terrorist acts).

We must speak the truth, but we must not mistake hatred for the truth! We are all made in the image of God, who loves us. We must speak the truth through the filter of His love and His guidance that we love one another. Don't speak the truth in service of lies!

Michael Doran is Andrew's guest. He wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal saying that we shouldn't leave the Iran deal; it should be fixed.

President Obama didn't tell the truth about the Iran deal. It was actually a reorientation of American policy in the Middle East toward Iran. We stopped prosecuting Hezbollah drug cases. Obama put the nuclear question aside for ten years. He pulled out of Iraq, even though Iran is right next door. By his actions, he said now the real game is in East Asia. Obama believes we are the problem. Obama believed he was the anointed one to fix it all.

Trump can decide to reapply the sanctions at a moment's notice. How do we contain Iran? What is the smartest way to go about it? If Trump pulls out of the Iran deal, we go into a major conflict with our European allies, the Russians, and the Chinese. Some American legislators are trying to fix the deal by getting rid of the sunsets. Iranian ICBMs are unacceptable. The levels of uranium enrichment must stay where they are now. If the Iranians ever move beyond the terms of the deal, then we are going to reimpose sanctions.