Jay Van Bavel: Are a Few People Ruining the Internet for the Rest of Us?

In a paper I recently published with Claire Robertson and Kareena del Rosario, we found extensive evidence that social media is less like a neutral reflection of society and more like a funhouse mirror. It amplifies the loudest and most extreme voices while muting the moderate, the nuanced and the boringly reasonable. And much of that distortion, it turns out, can be traced back to a handful of hyperactive online voices. Just 10% of users produce roughly 97% of political tweets.

Going back to this idea I keep hitting on over and over recently, it's really important to understand that the discourse you see on social media may be somewhat reflective of society as a whole, but are ultimately a small slice of the most engaged and often most extreme voices who also happen to be incentivized by what gets views rather than what is actually true.