موت الحقيقة | كيف منحت وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي المحتالين الأسلحة لتدمير الثقة واستقطاب العالم

How have we become a world in which truths - shared truths - have lost their ability to unite us as a society, as a country, and globally? How have we allowed the spread of alternative facts, hoaxes, and even conspiracy theories to destroy our trust in trusted institutions, leaders, and experts? Bestselling journalist Steven Brill documents the forces and people, from Silicon Valley to Madison Avenue to Moscow to Washington, who have created and exploited this world of chaos and division, and offers practical solutions for what we can do about it. “An accurate description of the punishment cell we have built around our minds, the first steps toward light and clean air,” says Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny” and a professor of history at Yale University. He adds: “A pioneering, documented, and honest study of two of the central dilemmas of our time: What is the truth, and where do we find it?” —Bob Woodward, associate editor, The Washington Post. As co-founder of NewsGuard, which specializes in tracking misinformation online, Stephen Brill has witnessed firsthand the rise of fake news. In The Death of Truth, he explains with startling, often terrifying clarity, how we got here, and how we can return to a world where truth is respected. None of this – embracing conspiracy theories, mocking expertise, ignoring empirical evidence – happened by accident. Brill takes us inside the decisions made by Silicon Valley executives to program the algorithms built into their social media platforms to maximize profits by promoting controversial content. Brill exposes the ingenuity of programmatic ad-buying systems that reward clickbait content and penalizes trusted news publishers, and describes how the use of these ad-funded and misleading platforms by politicians, fraudsters, and conspiracy theorists deceives ordinary citizens. Brill documents how America's greatest enemies have used American-made social media and advertising tools against us in massive disinformation campaigns, and how the development of generative artificial intelligence may dramatically worsen the situation unless we act. The risks are high for all of us, including Brill himself, whose company's role in exposing Russian disinformation operations led to a Russian agent targeting him and his family. And most importantly