I think it's unclear at this point
whether the ease of publishing
and the ease of finding things is a net
benefit for people being better informed.
My assumption going into the digital era
was that the more people who could publish —
the fact that you could have reputation systems about was reliable —
would mean that we'd have more voices out there
and we would become more knowledgeable and
society would benefit from that depth of understanding.
What we're seeing now,
which is an offset to that benefit,
are people clustering in communities where they're listening
to things that are attacks on the people they don't like,
even if they're true or not.
I hope that people's desires to know the truth
and to share ideas with other people,
but it certainly is being questioned
whether it's working that way or not.
And a lot of debate about, "Well then, what's the responsibility of the network
to expose people to different points of view
or filter out things that are wrong?"
It's a tough thing to be put in that position.
You know, what is hate speech? What is so antiscientific
that it shouldn't be out there?
So the digital era, you know, it's new, and it is a bit concerning that it
isn't pulling us together as much as we would have hoped.
Do you see a path forward or
is there a role for Facebook to play?
Is there a role for government to play?
Yeah, I think we all have to look at, you know,
why is this happening?
How do you avoid this kind of clustering?
I mean, it started happening with the cable news channels.
And then it's more pronounced in the digital channels.
Our foundation's involved in crop work around GMOs
and if you look up, there's way more stuff that's against them,
honestly, nonscientifically, than there is for them.
And that imbalance that the antis
are responding not to the science,
but something about the world changing
or some lack of trust.
How can we make this tool work
the other way or at least offset that?
I think there's room for more creativity here.
