Is sunshine really the best disinfectant?
I’ve often heard that “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” In particular when it comes to speech that many of us find intolerable, or just factually wrong. By exposing it, we are able to see what people really think and address it. We are able to counter radical ideas with common sense and perhaps move people closer to the center on some topics. When people put out wrong information, we can provide readers with correct information to consider. These all seem like useful things when it comes to public and private discourse.
And yet, like most ideals, they require perfect conditions.
When it comes to conspiracy theories, for example, often those who have fallen into the rabbit hole are far more invested in the minute details than someone who comes across it at random and happens to be skeptical. Disproving narratives that have, at times, taken thousands of hours to put together is a heavier burden/workload than most are willing to take on. And even those conspiracies that haven’t required such dramatic time investments to arrive at, it’s often far easier to present dramatic assertions than to disprove them. Especially on the go. This presents a structural hindrance to “sunshine.”
In the age of social media, we have even more to overcome. It would be great if someone presenting a lie would quickly get debunked, but reality is that the lie can travel a tremendous distance before the truth even knows to give chase. I’ve seen many such examples. Like posts that completely fabricate things that never happened, even citing particular sources who then come out publicly proving none of the original allegations were true to begin with. Yet, the lie had gotten millions of views, whereas the correction has only 50k or so. In such situations, the lie wins. The sunshine never really reaches it.
There’s a compelling argument about why we should allow people with all sorts of beliefs to speak publicly. The idea is that if they have to hide their thoughts, they never experience any resistance to them. They end up only speaking openly with those who already share such beliefs, thus reinforcing them, and radicalizing them further. Having conversations with those who oppose may allow them to change their minds and shift away their thinking from the extremes. And in some cases, if not many, it is true.
However, this assumes a level of engagement with those who hold opposing beliefs. But what often happens is that social media allows those who hold a particular belief to more easily find those who already agree with them. They team up with those who think like them and egg each other on towards more extreme positions. Go out into the real world and state that “Hitler was right” and you’re probably (I hope) not going to be overly popular. Post the same on social media, and you’ll get thousands of likes. Does it represent the overall viewpoint in the world? Hopefully not, but it’s easier for like to find like online, and there’s something deeply reassuring in knowing that your hate is shared by others.
Similarly, people on social media have an easier time finding and building communities where everyone thinks in similar ways—whether it reflects a passion for conspiracy theories or hatred for particular groups of people, or just about anything else.
The idea of “sunshine” is about exposing ideas, and it works in multiple ways. We expose what people think, since we cannot tackle something if we don’t even know it exists. But for it to work, it needs to function as a disinfectant. That means that ideas need to be challenged, scrutinized, and developed. That can’t happen within the echo chambers that so many silo themselves into. However, you can’t force people to communicate with those they don’t want to. And therein lies the rub.
Those who are familiar with my work, know that instead of censorship, I tend to advocate for two things:
Providing more information - That means using tools like Community Notes—even if imperfect—to provide more information and context, rather than taking away our ability to see things. Even though I’ve criticized some aspects of fact-checking services in the past, I still think there’s room for those that provide more transparency, honesty, and neutrality. I’ve relied on some of them for very important debunking of false information. Social media platform should also promote citations of sources, so that readers can be more aware of where information is coming from and content creators can earn more trust by sharing that with their readers.
Technological innovation and interface design - Social media has not been designed with the overall good of the users in mind. It’s designed to be “sticky” and keep us on the platforms. It often amplifies the most extreme voices and inflammatory posts. I believe that it’s time for these platforms, and us, to rethink how these algorithms are designed to function in ways that help humanity, not destroy it. (If you look at the China-facing version TikTok, for example, vs the North American one…you’ll see that educational content is massively amplified). There’s an opportunity to design platforms where educational and uplifting content is prioritized over toxicity, should the users choose. There are also AI tools that can be used to verify certain information being shared and provide notes, if needed—including sources of images. To that point, any AI-generated image should automatically be labelled as such upon upload. Overall, this an area where the hive mind should be put to good use—inviting both end-users and professionals like psychologists, designers, software engineers, and others to participate.
While the concept of "sunshine as the best disinfectant” holds great promise in theory, real-world challenges, especially in the age of social media, pose significant obstacles to its effective implementation. Just like with communism or libertarianism, which might work in theory, in practice we live in an imperfect world with particularly imperfect humans with a variety of desires, and it will always lead to corruption, straying away from the ideals.
Rapid dissemination of falsehoods in online spaces and like only seeking out like, are rather serious obstacles. It doesn’t mean, however, that sunshine doesn’t ever get in through the cracks, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen. And perhaps the positives even outweigh the negatives. But there are clearly some challenges that we should address.
I believe we can do some by giving people better to tools and re-building platforms to have incentives that are more human-forward. But that will take a great deal of good will, collaboration, and collective intelligence.
Pre-Order my book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage―Lessons for the Silenced Majority (out Jan 30/24)—speaking up today is more important than ever.
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This was an excellent and concise summary of a few of the problems with relying on "sunshine" to cure the downsides of free speech with some good, practical suggestions for improvement.
Thanks Katherine.
Maybe if teachers taught critical thinking in school, there would be less siloed thinking and echo chambers!