Ezra Klein: belief

Transcript context

…But we both benefit from being on Twitter. I know. I don’t think all the things you benefit from are great. Look, I have a lot of Twitter followers, so I’m speaking against an interest here. In some ways, with Twitter, I have an early-mover advantage. I have watched this, and look, I am very influenced by my role being politics in the media. So, that’s more what I’m talking about than anything else. I think virtually every politician and media figure who goes on Twitter is a worse version of themselves on it than off of it, and that we are in a collective action problem, where it is individually rational for everybody to be on it, and it is collectively bad for all of these institutions to be on it. Among other things, again, in a slightly Martin Gurri way, I think that one of the things Twitter is doing, particularly for the media, is making it extremely clear some of our . . . If somebody is not a big fan of “objective media,” I think it’s even a bad version of this. It’s making extremely clear our biases, the ways in which we’re cliquish, the ways in which we are reactive. I think for politicians, it incentivizes a lot of their worst behavior. Again, it is good for individuals, and that’s one reason that I still am on it. But I feel like there are things in society that are not good for society, but in order for me to play my role in society, I still have to participate in, and that’s one of them. You’re now out in the Bay Area. How has living amongst the so-called world of tech changed your nonpolitical views?…

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