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Does banning bad behavior just make it worse?

Say the word “internet” these days, and most people will call to mind images of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, of Google and Twitter: sprawling, intrusive, unaccountable. This tiny handful of vast tech corporations and their distant CEOs demand our online attention and dominate the offline headlines.  But on the real internet, one or two clicks away from that handful of conglomerates, there remains a wider, more diverse, and more generous world. Often run by volunteers, frequently without any obvious institutional affiliation, sometimes tiny, often local, but free for everyone online to...

The current political climate in the U.S. is defined by heightened partisanship. Media bias is prevalent and pernicious, and content posted to social media platforms tends to alienate certain groups and unintentionally detract from the cause it represents. Because content that’s interacted with the most tends to yield the highest monetary returns, content creators are encouraged to post attention-grabbing content at the expense of credibility. Beyond the influence of money in the media, those with sincere hopes to influence public opinion are also inclined to cater to the interests of me...

The Librarian War Against QAnon Barbara Fister © Adam Maida / The Atlantic For too long now, shared reality has been fracturing before our eyes. Eli Pariser’s concept of the “filter bubble” is already a decade old. Yochai Benkler’s research on propaganda networks finds that the roots of our epistemic crisis predate even the existence of the social web. The origins of this broken informational environment may be complicated, but the stakes are quite clearly life-and-death—and they prompt a question: How can so many people believe things that are obviously untrue? Se...

such faulty ideas, concepts and terms actually misrepresent what's happening online Filter bubbles and echo chambers have become popular concepts in media commentary. They are frequently invoked as an explanation for the apparent rise of conspiracy theories, extremism and social division. In this popular conception, filter bubbles and echo chambers are "destroying democracy" by reducing our exposure to diverse ideas while fostering extremism among like-minded people. These ideas became popular in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and they remain popular now to explain everything ...