Ideas worth spreading

Dear Facebook, this is how you're breaking democracy

1,953,265 views |

Yaël Eisenstat |

TED2020

• August 2020

"Lies are more engaging online than truth," says former CIA analyst, diplomat and Facebook employee Yaël Eisenstat. "As long as [social media] algorithms' goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poison that plays to our worst instincts and human weaknesses." In this bold talk, Eisenstat explores how social media companies like Facebook incentivize inflammatory content, contributing to a culture of political polarization and mistrust -- and calls on governments to hold these platforms accountable in order to protect civil discourse and democracy.

"Lies are more engaging online than truth," says former CIA analyst, diplomat and Facebook employee Yaël Eisenstat. "As long as [social media] algorithms' goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poison that plays to our worst instincts and human weaknesses." In this bold talk, Eisenstat explores how social media companies like Facebook incentivize inflammatory content, contributing to a culture of political polarization and mistrust -- and calls on governments to hold these platforms accountable in order to protect civil discourse and democracy.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Yaël Eisenstat

Yaël Eisenstat

Democracy activist

See speaker profile

After years spent as a CIA analyst, diplomat and national security advisor at the White House, Yaël Eisenstat began to view the breakdown of civil discourse as the biggest threat to US democracy.

Guillaume Chaslot | WIRED, 2019 | Article

"The Toxic Potential of YouTube’s Feedback Loop"

Guillaume Chaslot is an ex-Google engineer who worked directly on YouTube's recommendation engine from 2010 to 2011. His work since leaving has provided critical insight into how these algorithms work and why this engagement model can be so dangerous. As he says in this article, "One of my main tasks was to increase the amount of time people spent on YouTube. At the time, this pursuit seemed harmless. But nearly a decade later, I can see that our work had unintended — but not unpredictable — consequences. In some cases, the AI went terribly wrong."

Eli Pariser | Penguin Books, 2011 | Book

The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You

Fellow TED speaker Eli Pariser saw earlier than most the potential danger for how these social media business models could drive us towards further polarization through the personalization process that I describe in my talk. His book, published in 2012, is described as warning: "this new trend is nothing short of an invisible revolution in how we consume information, one that will shape how we learn, what we know, and even how our democracy works."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.