Digital Disinformation Quotes

It's hard to change information in books, but if we have everything online, then a somewhat untrustworthy group of people controlling the thing - which I think is what we have - gives us '1984.'

I need to be very careful about going on certain networks that seem to have a bias.

We have entered a time when a writer's first idea is his best idea, when the first thing a reporter hears is the first thing that she reports. We live in a time now when we have seen major television networks take video off of YouTube and broadcast it to millions of Americans without verifying whether the video had been fabricated or not.

The political danger of the Internet is that it becomes another tool for special interests.

What is new is the multiplying reach and volume of the Internet, concentrating the toxicity of destructive emotions and circulating them in the political bloodstream with unparalleled velocity.

Seeing how easy it has been to use Twitter for good has exposed the double-edged sword of how easy it could be to co-opt.

With the profusion of images and the Internet, you can get any truth you want.

If the social media platforms don't take the gatekeeping seriously they will kill the public sphere. If we don't get this right in 2020 you can open a decade or longer of a descent into fascism. And it will be global because platforms are global.

Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds. You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It’s a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It is a no man’s land.

If we can't have a public debate because the information space is so polluted, or because people are afraid of the reactions of organized trolls, then we can't really have meaningful elections anymore, either.

The dark side of social media is that, within seconds, anything can be blown out of proportion and taken out of context. And it's very difficult not to get swept up in it all.

North Korea aside, most authoritarian governments have already accepted the growth of the Internet culture as inevitable; they have little choice but to find ways to shape it in accord with their own narratives - or risk having their narratives shaped by others.

The Internet has turned the world into one gigantic linked community, capable of instantly sharing vast amounts of incorrect information.

Facebook has become the richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms - shattering the public square into millions of personalised news feeds, shifting entire societies away from the open terrain of genuine debate and argument while they make billions from our valued attention.

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.

The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism.

The blogosphere is real, and it can be really harsh on fakes... so, if you're a phoney, you're going to get your bell rung.

There was a hateful video that was disseminated on the internet. It had nothing to do with the United States government and it's one that we find disgusting and reprehensible. It's been offensive to many, many people around the world.

Technology enabled Rappler's fast growth starting in 2012, but we were also among the first victims when social media was weaponized in 2016.

Social media has had a corrosive effect on government and trust, and I think it is a real cause for concern.

The danger of the Internet is cocooning with the like-minded online - of sending an email or Twitter and confusing that with action - while the real corporate and military and government centers of power go right on.

It is true that the Internet can be used to disseminate falsehoods quickly, but it just as quickly roots them out and exposes them in a way that the traditional model of journalism and its closed, insular, one-way form of communication could never do.

The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy.

We went from journalism, in newspapers that gets heavily edited, to blogs, where you can express your opinions, to tweeting, where you can say anything, and it gets repeated and becomes fact when it isn't. It's something the entire world is going to have to come to grips with.

The Internet unfortunately means that, although a lot of truth and good stuff can spread as a result of the Internet, I think bad stuff and negativity spreads even more quickly.