John Gable

Founder/ CEO of AllSides Inc.
Maker of tools that empower people and improve the world.

[Tara LaRosa @TaraLaRosa]

Greatest new song to come out of the World Cup! ⚽️❤️🇺🇸 Welcome To The Land Of The Free!🇺🇸❤️⚽️

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Major new report on global trends in mental health, out today from Sapien Labs. Data from 2.5 million people across 85 countries.

Some of the most important findings:

1) Young adults used to generally have good mental health, compared to older generations. But now, in ALL countries examined, they are doing badly compared to older generations in that country.

2) "Four key factors have emerged that together predict three quarters of this effect. These are diminished
family bonds, diminished spirituality, smartphones at increasingly young age, and increasing consumption of
ultra-processed food."

3) The decline of young people's mental health is "most pronounced in the wealthier and more developed countries." They note that it is in such countries that smartphones are given earliest, junk food is most heavily consumed, spirituality is most diminished, and family ties are looser and often weaker.

4) "A younger age of first smartphone ownership is associated with increased suicidal thoughts,
aggression, and other problems in adulthood."

5) Here is their summary of findings on early smartphone ownership:

"GenZ is the first generation to grow up with a smartphone. Among this group, the younger they acquired their first smartphone in childhood, the more likely they are to have struggles as adults. These struggles extend beyond sadness and anxiety to less discussed symptoms, such as a sense of being detached from reality, suicidal thoughts, and aggression towards others. The effects arise through disruption of sleep, increased risk of exposure to harmful online content, predators, and explicit material as well as increased probabilities of cyberbullying during crucial developmental years. Excessive time spent on smartphones also diminishes the development of social cognition that requires learned interpretation of facial expressions, body language, and group dynamics. The negative impacts are particularly sharp below age 13."

The report is short, accessible, and important. Read it here:

https://t.co/hFGAyoWabs

[John Gable @JohnGable]

An AllSides intern in PA first noticed Harris Google Ads that misrepresent the news. We reveal bias/ misinfo from left to right, this was huge.

We shared our findings, now hot on @axios, @newrepublic @FoxNews @seanhannity @musk @timcast @Newsweek @nypost @DailyCaller @USATODAY

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

AllSides proudly broke the viral story about the Harris campaign rewriting news headlines on Google. @axios and other media across the spectrum picked it up.

Here's how we uncovered it and shared it with the world 🧵

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

AllSides proudly broke the viral story about the Harris campaign rewriting news headlines on Google. @axios and other media across the spectrum picked it up.

Here's how we uncovered it and shared it with the world 🧵

[John Gable @JohnGable]

@threadreaderapp @threadreaderapp unroll

[John Gable @JohnGable]

@thefuturebyJC @ValueAnalyst1 @threadreaderapp unroll

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

@elonmusk @lexfridman Journalists need feedback from a balanced group of Americans and bias experts.

Our Media Bias Audits have helped newsrooms in LA and NYC go from Lean Left to Center biases in less than 2 years.

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

Study on polarization using AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ found:

👉the left uses more emojis
👉the left uses more language like sis/vibe/af/tbh
👉the right uses more political names & terms like constitution/border/taxpayer
👉where the left talks about birthdays & music, the right talks freedom, government, Biden...and about the left (a lot)

[John Gable @JohnGable]

AllSides was reposted by Musk (again) showing how the bias of Google News. We are replying with a more complete picture that shows several news aggregators to help people avoid falling into either a left or right news bubble.

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

@elonmusk And it’s not just Google News — almost every news aggregator we analyzed leans left.

Don’t get sucked into one-sided left or right: there are alternatives

https://t.co/Dm8z29NpRV

[John Gable @JohnGable]

Whether it is just left news or right news, don't get sucked in or fooled into believing that aggregators aren't biased too.

In order to think for ourselves and have a healthy, vibrant democratic society, we need to get out of these one-sided, heavily biased news bubbles.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

And some people still believe the news 🤯

[Chris Williamson @ChrisWillx]

I had a conversation with a friend this week about how we all become captured by culture wars.

We can call it The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle.

Here is how it goes:

1. Some woke news story hits the press.

-“Cats suffer from racial discrimination or screwing in lightbulbs needs to be recognised as a valid sexual kink or something.”

2. The Right Wing antibody response activates.

-“Look at how insane these people are. *Matt Walsh quote tweets the article and calls it obnoxious* This is the problem with our convenient, decadent, TikTok society.”

3. This reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe-scenario into a much bigger event.
​
4. The Left Wing counter-response activates.

-“Right wingers lose their minds over one woman with a particularly dark cat. The Daily Wire has meltdown over insignificant troll article.”

-In times where the original story is less insane, this includes a defence of the original article too. “Cats actually CAN experience trauma, minimising this is the REAL problem.”

5. The Right Wing re-reaction kicks into gear.

-“Apparently I’m insane for pushing back against Cat Trauma. See this is the problem, if we don’t stand our ground, these blue haired idiots will take over the country.”

6. Finally, the Touch Grass Meta-Reactionaries steam in.

-“The real issue is people talking about this issue. Look at how silly this whole thing is. It’s time to check out of the culture war. We should reconnect with what really matters. You should move onto the ranch next to Ryan Holiday and hammer fence posts into the ground for the rest of time.”

This cycle is banal.

It’s excruciatingly repetitive.

So why does it sustain our attention if basically every discussion follows the same cycle?

Because each story is sprinkled with just enough novelty to give it the illusion that this is a new, different event.

Which legitimates the pushback… “We’ve not seen THIS Trans Flag with People Who Suffer From A Gluten Intolerance included in it before.”

It’s like a 20th season of Lost where they’re back on an island for the 7th time and need to escape, but THIS TIME IT’S WINTER.

The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle does my head in.

It does my head in because I get captured by it.

I see a bank rewriting classic fairy tales into a boss-bitch remake called Fairer Tales: Princesses Doing It For Themselves and think “this is fucking dumb, where’s Douglas Murray, I need him to decimate this idea with me.”

It’s cathartic.

Calling out insane ideas written by idiots is so compelling and fun and easy to do that it’s like being a cocaine addict with Pablo Escobar as a next door neighbour.

The memes of production are whirring at maximum RPM and we’re all caught in the vortex.

It was Douglas who reminded me why I’m getting so exasperated with this cycle.

It is a distraction.

A distraction from our attention being focussed on things which are actually meaningful.

Not just meaningful in a “will you remember this when you’re dead”-way.

But in a “there’s other issues that are more important to talk about”-way too.

There’s entire American cities with fentanyl epidemics.

80% of suicides of people aged 18 to 24 are men.

I want to hear Peterson talk about dealing with finding meaning in a world stripped of all its guard rails.

I want Taleb to be writing about applying complex maths to simple life problems.

Many of the smartest people on the planet have had their attention captured arguing about whether men are men and women are women or not over the last few years.

And even more of the normal ones too.

All of our collective minds are held hostage by an endless cycle of shiny objects that aggravate both sides and makes them feel righteous for standing their ground.

I think this is a bottomless pit.

I don’t think it’s going to stop.

I will almost certainly bring up stories like these in future.

But I’m gonna try hard to focus more on stuff that matters in 50 years, not just in 50 minutes.

And probably so should you.

[John Gable @JohnGable]

@Timcast Most are addicted to a broken click-bait biz model that kills their credibility as they abandon balanced news in favor of partisan bias to thrill their audience, agenda or their own egos. So people look for alternatives like https://t.co/6PXQfmNW9W or trusted X leaders.

[Tim Pool @Timcast]

Google is rigging the 2024 election

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

Caitlin - thanks for your commentary.

We understand there is much more to bias than left vs right - there is also authoritarian to libertarian, establishment to anti-establishment, East to West, and so on. US media is overly focused on left to right, and generally biased toward the US worldview.

Note that AllSides is not BothSides. Our mission is to free people from filter bubbles, including US-centric bubbles, and we are confident in our bias ratings within that scope. We are currently working internally on how to effectively evaluate bias systematically worldwide.

We appreciate your accurate concerns about the biases of and beyond US media at large and hope to offer more resources for media literacy in this area soon.

--> More info on what we do and how we do it: https://t.co/XVET2zgnXi

[AllSides @AllSidesNow]

@lexfridman Thanks for sharing! Here’s the latest version of our chart, with updated ratings for NPR, Newsweek, USA Today and more.

https://t.co/QdM9riclOR

[John Gable @JohnGable]

Cool to see @elonmusk retweet this post of @AllSidesNow media bias chart. We use patented systems to reflect the average judgments of all Americans from left to right, not just an elite few, by having people across the country look only at the content (not knowing the brand).

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

The media is a self-organizing division-creating machine.

Shown is the political lean of various media organization. A good way to combat division is to read multiple sources across this spectrum, steelmanning perspective you don't agree with, seeking to understand not deride.

[John Gable @JohnGable]

@rajmathai CEO from AllSides balanced news service here. FYI your guest politics expert was wrong - Reagan was not the last elected GOP Gov - she forgot Wilson and Deukmeijan. Hard to catch those mistakes live - good luck!

[Caspar Estate @CasparEstate]

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[John Gable @JohnGable]

Time to visit wine country! Be sure to see Veraison!

[Caspar Estate @CasparEstate]

We are beginning to see that #veraison has started. We ❤️ seeing the berries ripening in our #Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard. Seeing the progress is so exciting!
#estatewines #organicfarming #itsfromnapa #smalllotwines #cabernetsauvignon🍷 #estatevineyards #grapecluster

[John Gable @JohnGable]

@winewankers @Cultivar_SF Haha!