- Can I defend social media?

The dinosaur media has been able to push a lot of lies on us, and social media, because of the competition, it's infinite voices.

It is infinite voices, and that's why I think we are getting a lot more truth today.

- But it's not anti-social media.

It's anti an angry mob.

Social media is incredible that it democratizes this and that so many people can have a voice, but moving in an angry mob that's nameless and faceless is something very different from that.

- I mean social media quells that because people can talk on social media, they can get the truth.

Angry mobs are driven by hate most of the time.

- If we know who those people are.

Do we know what their names are, their faces are, what their standards are?

- Benjamin Franklin said that a lie can make it halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

That's particularly true in the digital age.

It goes faster, but in the end, the truth comes out and people are held accountable for those things.

- The truth is the truth.

It doesn't change, it's unchanging.

The problem we have in America right now is we have a segment of society that has wiped that out.

There is no truth.

But if as Americans we can't agree on basic, simple truths that we have agreed on for 249 years, I don't know how we move forward together.

- I think we have to understand that in some ways, human cognition is not tuned to the power of the social media algorithm that controls so much more of our lives than it ever has.

I think if we don't face up to that, we're gonna continue to have the fights over over objective truth.

We're gonna continue to have fights over who gets to speak in the public square, and what are the boundaries of acceptable speech and behavior.

- We can't look to our opponents and think, how could they think that they're Neanderthals for thinking that, you know, belittle their beliefs.

We would all do a little bit good to reach over and actually try to understand where they're coming from.

Why were they protesting, you know, on either side?

What's at the heart of it?

- If we can't engage in that deliberation, that is at the heart of self-governance, because we really don't know if we actually have the information we need, because of misinformation, because disagreement has calcified, because our hatreds and grievances overrun reason, then we're going to be lost.

Democracy can't work, and so if as long as we are enemies looking at each other, as opposed to fellows trying to live a life together, as long as we lie to each other about the past that shapes how we see the world and how we see each other.

And as long as we take advantage and inflame our differences, right, we can never make real the promise of America.