The Distorted Mirror

I remember the first time someone called me Hitler online. It was on Twitter in 2009, just after the Fort Hood terrorist attack. I politely suggested that the user read up on Islamist radicalism after he implied that shooter Nidal Hasan’s religion was irrelevant. My argument, he said, was invalid because Hitler drew ideas from books, too.

Since then, I’ve been called every name you can think of, on every platform, from X to TikTok—even once on IMDb. Some of it stems from my background: I’m an Israeli who later served as the NYPD’s director of social media, a Venn diagram of hatred that often resembles a full circle. But consulting for private clients in online crises, I saw the same patterns everywhere.

When social media’s founders imagined their platforms, this wasn’t the plan. Mark Zuckerberg described Facebook as “built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.” Jack Dorsey called Twitter “the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.” What they didn’t account for is that their tools would be used by humans.

It’s easy to blame the algorithm for “rage baiting” us whenever we open our phones. But the algorithm is trained on human behavior, not the other way around. We also need our feeds curated for us—95 million posts are shared on Instagram every day, and the app would be unusable without some personalization.

That the content that draws us in happens to be sensational isn’t new—tabloids have been around since the birth of media. But the scale today is different, as is the accessibility. The shortcut to the human brain goes through the heart, and the heart now sits in the palm of our hand when we can’t fall asleep.

For the sake of our national blood pressure, it’s important to understand that we are not seeing the world as it truly is through our phones but looking, as Martin Gurri has written, at “shards of reality”—broken pieces of a mirror. Most social-media users are passive consumers, while only a small number hold a megaphone. You’re not glimpsing into the will of the people but of only a handful of them.

For years, I told clients and students that social media isn’t real life. That remains as true as it has ever been. For one, we overestimate how extreme our adversaries are and how divided the nation is. Research shows that both Democrats and Republicans believe that nearly twice as many of their opponents hold extreme views than actually do. In fact, many studies show that Americans are less divided than they appear, and majorities privately agree on many major issues.

Elected officials too often look into this distorted mirror as well. I’ve watched public-pressure campaigns replace a few letters to a congressman with viral posts, one-click email floods, and anonymous threats. Being in the middle of one of these surges can feel overwhelming. The loudest voices drown out the silent majority, and dissenters often opt out altogether.

Take the Defund the Police movement that engulfed social media in the summer of 2020 and beyond. Everywhere you looked, celebrities, thought leaders, and even Kamala Harris were encouraging us to “reimagine police budgets.” But in 2020, 73 percent of Americans imagined them to be just fine, or that they should even be increased. The same dynamic applies to other hot-button issues like transgender rights or Ukraine.

The solution is not to ban social media or keep adjusting moderation rules. Platforms are not exempt from the broader crisis of institutional trust. We need to demand perspective and courage from our decision-makers and the ability to make distinctions between the mob and the rest of us. Decisions shouldn’t be based on a surge in online insults.

As for our private lives, social media should be treated like a controlled substance: enjoyable in moderation. But know your limits and recognize the X-glasses for what they are before the borders of reality blur. If you do overindulge from time to time, avoid operating heavy machinery or drawing sweeping conclusions about humankind.