Sacha Baron Cohen Links the Decline of Democracy to the Rise of Social Media, “the Greatest Propaganda Machine in History”

Pre­sent­ing a keynote address at an ADL con­fer­ence, come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen was­n’t kid­ding around when he paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of our emerg­ing world: “Today … dem­a­gogues appeal to our worst instincts. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries once con­fined to the fringe are going main­stream. It’s as if the Age of Reason—the era of evi­den­tial argument—is end­ing, and now knowl­edge is dele­git­imized and sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus is dis­missed. Democ­ra­cy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autoc­ra­cy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surg­ing, as are mur­der­ous attacks on reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties.”

What’s lead­ing to these desta­bi­liz­ing changes? Baron Cohen could cite many rea­sons. But if pushed, he’ll empha­size one:

But one thing is pret­ty clear to me. All this hate and vio­lence is being facil­i­tat­ed by a hand­ful of inter­net com­pa­nies that amount to the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

The great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

Think about it. Face­book, YouTube and Google, Twit­ter and others—they reach bil­lions of peo­ple. The algo­rithms these plat­forms depend on delib­er­ate­ly ampli­fy the type of con­tent that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trig­ger out­rage and fear. It’s why YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos by the con­spir­acist Alex Jones bil­lions of times. It’s why fake news out­per­forms real news, because stud­ies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no sur­prise that the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry has spread the old­est con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in history—the lie that Jews are some­how dan­ger­ous. As one head­line put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Face­book.”

On the inter­net, every­thing can appear equal­ly legit­i­mate. Bre­it­bart resem­bles the BBC. The fic­ti­tious Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rant­i­ngs of a lunatic seem as cred­i­ble as the find­ings of a Nobel Prize win­ner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democ­ra­cy depends.

You can watch his sober­ing talk above, or read the tran­script here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom