Hatred is easy. Building is hard.

Back in 1997, just before joining Netscape Navigator as a product manager, I gave a speech on how the internet would teach us to discriminate against each other in new ways. Sadly, that prediction came true. 

Don’t misunderstand — I “drank the Kool-Aid” and continue to believe in the extraordinary benefits and still-growing future potential of the internet and a connected world. But depending on how it is developed and how we use it, let’s not deceive ourselves — it is not all roses. The technology designed to help us manage information overload created filter bubbles that fueled misunderstanding, division and hate. It also led to a side “benefit” that I never predicted – profitable but toxic business models that spread that division and hate far beyond imagination.

And with AI, the opportunities and dangers multiply. 

It's not inherently wrong to hate. There are things worth hating – cruelty, corruption, abuse, the new Coca-Cola Orange Cream. But by defining ourselves strictly by our hatred, we poison ourselves. Our identities become shaped by the things we despise, and we become a slightly different form of the thing we hate. 

Hating has become a shortcut to seeking meaning, community and righteousness. Hating is what social media and online commentators are telling us to do, and it is slowly destroying us.

A recent New York Times essay “I Hate,Therefore I Am” by Mark Edmundson awakened the philosopher in me. He writes:

“Descartes had a famous dictum about the constitutive powers of the thinking self: I think therefore I am. Could it be that, today, I hate, therefore I am? What if who and what we hate is who we are now?”  

We’ve all seen this play out firsthand. Hatred can give us a sense of energy and righteousness without requiring the hard work of building. 

Building requires listening to people who disagree with us. It requires discomfort. It requires understanding nuance, compromise, and patience with the slow pace of progress.

If algorithms added gasoline to the fire, AI is rocket fuel

When we were first building web browsers, we understood that the internet would connect us, and it has in ways we could not even imagine. It has helped build a wonderful, empowering, magical new world.  But it also has some problems. As the flood of information overwhelmed us, technology began to curate it for us, prioritizing content that maximizes engagement and ad revenue — aka, clickbait.

What is the easiest way to make content engaging and viral? Make it sensational and shocking, generate fear and anger, hide nuance, and insert us into tribes where we feel we have to conform and fight against others that are different or think differently. Lots of studies, like this one from the University of Colorado, demonstrate how information bubbles generate division and impact us far more than we think they do.  

Information bubbles that confirm our views result in relationship bubbles that isolate us from people who see the world differently, resulting in extremism and the belief that “the other side” isn’t just wrong – they are evil. Now political violence, and support for political violence, are on the rise. [PRRI, 2023, PBS/Marist, 2024]

That is exactly what the great power manipulators of money and politics want, because hatred makes people easier to manipulate and control. It turns us into predictable allies and enemies. It shuts down curiosity. Creating an “enemy tribe” is very useful for winning elections, but terrible for solving problems. 

AI can generate information faster than any of us can verify it. While it has great positive potential, it also provides more opportunity for bad actors to wield power over complex and emotionally charged conversations, increasing their control by manipulating what we believe — and fueling the fire of hate. 

What is to be done?

In his New York Times essay, Edmundson reflects on John Keats’ idea of “developing negative capability: the ability to be in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, without irritably reaching after fact and reason. 

Keats offers us a beautiful detachment from the world and self. Suspend your commitment to belief, he says, if only for a while. See the world from all sides or as many sides as you can, as Shakespeare did. Quiet your opinions; rest the nagging, persistent self.”

This is what AllSides does: creates a space where we can pause with curiosity and ask, “What am I not seeing, what is the full picture?”

People often seek out the comfort of certainty. But certainty can lead to self-righteousness and extremism, which ultimately leads to hatred, division and loneliness. 

Solutions are not found in fast certainty — they are discovered with curiosity. And relationships are not built or deepened through fast certainty (or fast judgment) — they are fed by curiosity. 

AllSides was built to increase our understanding of the world and each other. That understanding counteracts unjustified hate. Our tools and technology create a context-rich information ecosystem where you can exercise your curiosity, get out of your bubbles, see all sides, appreciate other perspectives and people, and decide for yourself. 

Earlier technology overwhelmed us with too much information, and then was used to decide for us what we should see and think. Now we can use technology to better organize information, give context, reveal bias, and make space for understanding — in short, to get the full picture. That empowers all of us to make better decisions as part of democratic communities, organizations, and in our individual lives.

When we better understand what is really happening, and better understand each other, we can accomplish almost anything.

That is why we built AllSides — to gift the full picture to humanity.