#310 - Social Media & Public Trust

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sam Harris speaks with Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and Renee DiResta about the release of &ldquo;the Twitter files&rdquo; and the loss of trust in the institutions of media and government. They discuss Bari and Michael&rsquo;s experience of participating in the Twitter files release, the problem of misinformation, the relationship between Twitter and the federal government, Russian influence operations, the challenges of content moderation, Hunter Biden&rsquo;s infamous laptop, the need for transparency, platforms vs. publishers, Twitter&rsquo;s resistance to the FBI, political bias at Twitter, J.K. Rowling, the inherent subjectivity of moderation decisions, the rise of competitive platforms, rumors vs. misinformation, how Twitter attempted to control the spread of Covid misinformation, the throttling of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the failure of institutions to communicate Covid information well, the risk of paternalism, abuses of power, and other topics.</span></p> <p><strong>Bari Weiss </strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">is the founder and editor of</span> <a href="https://www.thefp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Free Press</span></em></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and host of the podcast</span> <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Honestly</span></em></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. From 2017 to 2020, Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The New York Times</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Before that, she was an op-ed and book review editor at </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Wall Street Journal</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and a senior editor at </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tablet Magazine</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Weiss is the winne