How populist leaders like Trump use ‘common sense’ as an ideological weapon to undermine facts

  It’s “the revolution of common sense,” President Donald Trump announced in his second inaugural address.

  And so it is. The latest installment of that assertion came in his Jan. 30, 2025 press conference about the Potomac plane crash. When asked how he had concluded that diversity policies were responsible for a crash that was still under investigation, Trump responded, “Because I have common sense, OK?”

Mark Zuckerberg thinks workplaces need to ‘man up’ − here’s why that’s bad for all employees, no matter their gender

  When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on a Jan. 10, 2025 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he lamented that corporate culture had become too “feminine,” suppressing its “masculine energy” and abandoning supposedly valuable traits such as aggression.

  The workplace, he concluded, has been “neutered.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Zuckerberg has also embraced stereotypically masculine pursuits in his personal life. He’s become a mixed martial arts aficionado and has shared his affinity for smoking meats. On his expansive Hawaii compound, he’s even taken up bow-and-arrow pig hunting.

Are social media apps ‘dangerous products’? 2 scholars explain how the companies rely on young users but fail to protect them

    “You have blood on your hands.”

    “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.”

  These quotes, the first from Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C), speaking to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the second from Zuckerberg to families of victims of online child abuse in the audience, are highlights from an extraordinary day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about protecting children online.

Personal data isn’t the ‘new oil,’ it’s a way to manipulate capitalism

  My recent research increasingly focuses on how individuals can and do manipulate, or “game,” contemporary capitalism. It involves what social scientists call reflexivity and physicists call the observer effect.

  Reflexivity can be summed up as the way our knowledge claims end up changing the world and the behaviors we seek to describe and explain.

  Sometimes this is self-fulfilling. A knowledge claim — like “everyone is selfish,” for example — can change social institutions and social behaviors so that we actually end up acting more selfish, thereby enacting the original claim.

Parker Snider: A guide to fake news

  More than once every day.... That’s how often President Trump publicly calls something “fake”—be it a story, poll, or news organization.

  Just weeks ago, Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress about, among other things, the proliferation of falsities on his social media platform, including in Alabama’s special election for U.S. Senate last year.

  We see the term everywhere, hear it lobbied daily on cable news, and use it ourselves (although perhaps often in jest).  But what really is fake news, and how do we spot it?

Sharon Shahid: Now trending: Hoaxes and fake news

  In 1835, the story that was trending in New York City involved the discovery of batlike creatures on the moon by a powerful telescope of “vast dimensions” located at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

  According to the spunky New York Sun, the groundbreaking penny paper that published the exclusive story, the four-foot-tall talking creatures had wings composed of thin membranes, with short, glossy hair the color of copper. The story, complete with an artist’s rendering of life on the moon, ran in six parts, captivating readers still mesmerized by the real-life appearance of Halley’s comet.

Gene Policinski: Sometimes, it would seem, artificial intelligence… isn’t

  As we hurtle through the innovative and endlessly updated second decade of the 21st century, the prospects seem brighter and better than ever that our new web and social media tools will help us better communicate and more effectively confront serious challenges like terrorism.

  But then, there are the reminders that the Algorithmic Age is still in its infancy and that all the programming in the virtual world sometimes falls short of good old people brainpower. And therein are the early warning signs that tech companies need to take in consideration of free expression rights into the inevitable — and perhaps even desirable — tilt toward AI over human “editors” controlling the flow of information.

Sanam Malik: The ‘Clock Kid’ incident is a small part of a bigger problem

  Last week, 14-year-old Texas high school student Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade digital clock to school hoping to impress his teacher. Instead of receiving praise for his great work, however, he was handcuffed, booked, and falsely charged with bringing a bomb to school. After an intense public outcry, all charges against him were dropped, and he was released. Ahmed is a Muslim American.