ADL's Never Is Now 2019 | ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sacha Baron Cohen

This is a thought-provoking speech. Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: ▶ this video Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen: * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement , which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content. * Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click. * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs? * Are social media companies publishers , like broadcast TV networks, magazines, and newspapers? Should social media companies be held to decency standards, like all publishers? I'm barely scratching the surface. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing!

This is a thought-provoking speech. Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: ▶ this video Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen: * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement , which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content. * Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click. * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the same way that, say, car companies bear responsibility for faulty engines or airplane manufacturers bear responsibility for faulty plane designs? * Are social media companies publishers , like broadcast TV networks, magazines, and newspapers? Should social media companies be held to decency standards, like all publishers? I'm barely scratching the surface. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing!

It is social media that is the root problem. On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen ▶ this video Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

I am going to let Sacha Baron Cohen, of all people, answer your question [1]: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. [1] ▶ this video

Disagree, there is no absolute freedom of speech, for example you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Also disagree that such unrestricted free speech is constructive or beneficial. Sacha Baron Cohen explains it best: ▶ this video

On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen ▶ this video Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

> do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech Historically newspapers, television and radio have decided what is acceptable to be published through their media. There is no reason modern internet-based media should be any different. On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen ▶ this video Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It is as if the age of reason -- the era of evidential argument -- is ending. Knowledge is de-legitimized 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. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. The above is by Sacha Baron Cohen, see: ▶ this video More excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen ▶ this video Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.

He gets into the relevant details in his speech at below timestamp [1]: > "Just imagine what Goebbels [2] could have done with Facebook" I think the bottom line is he is good at social engineering, and he recognizes the signs of manipulation at scale. Beyond that, he is smart enough to consume the literature. Note: Video is his award speech from ADL. But has sensitive wording and is NSFW. I found it to be pretty well put together - maybe reaching a bit in parts. [1] - ▶ this video [2] - link

I can convince you in the same degree you are willing to understand any evidence I give, a similar challenge arises with anti-vaxxers, a group that few years ago was just a laughing stock but now thanks to the online fear propaganda through social media now has created some focus of kids without vaccines creating disease risks believed to be long gone, such risks of social network are measureable, but there are things that are practically harder to measure like if the "pedophile hillary pizza place" changed what people think about that political candidate; in general the way people are influenciated by propaganda is not immediate but take years to slowly aggregate with other falsehoods or uncorrelated facts in order to disrupt society. Of course I see the problem of trying to separate truth/false stuff and you can get all philosophical about it but at the end of the day just trying to remove the blatant lies like "Hillary is an alien" and "Vaccines cause autism" would give a better outcome than doing nothing at all that is what Facebook does right now about it. This guy can explain it better than I do: ▶ this video

It sounds like you have an opinion but would rather sea lion. In the event that you are being genuine, there have been multitudes of instances. - Post jan 6 insurrection has left Republicans trying to justify their seditious invasion of the U.S. capital as protests protected by speech: link - The "Cancel culture" pejorative has created a double standard where a certain political party cries foul for being censored on private platforms (for violating TOS) and push for government regulation of said platforms to protect their political opinions. They are even trying to redefine private websites as the public square to do it. - Sacha Baron Cohen also sums it up nicely in his speech: ▶ this video If you really are genuine with your questions and asking for citations, you can google more topics about any of the above.