Social Media Put Us All in Our Own Truman Shows, Threatening Our Democracy (Guest Column)

hollywoodreporter.com:

On January 6, rioters wielding bats and confederate flags stormed the U.S. Capitol yelling, “The steal is real, the steal is real.

They’re not operating by our f—ing laws. This is real. And theirs is fake.” People who saw themselves as warriors righting a rigged system called for “the people who stole this election from us … hanging from a rope out here for treason” and scrawled “murder the media” on one of the Capitol’s entrance doors.

Later, our sitting president called them “very special” and some lawmakers said they were “patriots.” How did we get here? For the past four years, in the making of our documentary The Social Dilemma, my team and I have been studying how social media and search companies are impacting society.