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Note: Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

Hatred, misogyny, racism, vigilantism and personality cults existed long before the internet. Pamphlets, newspapers, radio and rumour have been used to inflame fear, reward demagogues and mobilise crowds. It cannot therefore be blamed for inventing cruelty or tribalism.

Yet it is equally misleading to call it a neutral mirror. Digital platforms alter speed, scale, anonymity, permanence, coordination and reward. We train recommendation systems through what we watch, share and linger over; they then shape what we encounter next. Because anger, fear and novelty hold attention, outrage can become commercially valuable. Research does not support a simple verdict: digital media can increase participation and knowledge, while also being associated with declining institutional trust, polarisation, hate and populism.

The same mechanisms can help an isolated young person find understanding, expose abuses ignored by institutions or organise assistance. They can also produce pile-ons, livestreamed vigilantism and communities in which increasingly extreme behaviour earns status. The architecture creating influencers also allows political leaders to bypass parties and journalists, turning followers into a personal constituency. The result may be not only a shift to the right, but a wider transfer of power from institutions to personalities.

The controversy over the treatment of Professor Jason Arday before his death raises a related question. Criticism and investigation may be legitimate; their cumulative repetition across headlines and individual posts can become punishment, without any participant feeling responsible for the whole. No causal claim about his death is needed to ask when scrutiny becomes a pile-on, or whether media coverage leads public hostility or responds to it.

Recent fatal wrong-way-driving cases show why causation needs scrutiny. Videos glorifying dangerous driving exist, but police said there was no evidence the A66 incident was filmed for TikTok. A plausible connection was easily converted into an assumed explanation—an example of the very problem under discussion.

AI intensifies the problem. It can manufacture text, voices and images cheaply, personalise persuasion and create the appearance of public agreement. It also gives anyone challenged by genuine evidence a ready response: that the evidence is fake. But AI is not an independent actor. Human choices still determine what is produced, believed, shared and rewarded.

The central question is therefore not simply whether the internet has made us worse. It is whether it reveals existing impulses, amplifies them or gradually reshapes us—and whether systems built to maximise attention can be reconciled with trust, restraint and democratic life.

Questions for discussion

  1. Does the internet create hostility, or chiefly expose, connect and amplify attitudes that already exist?
  2. In the Jason Arday case, how should legitimate scrutiny be distinguished from punishment by repetition?
  3. When does citizen investigation become vigilantism, and does livestreaming alter the answer?
  4. Has social media particularly strengthened the political right, or personality-led and anti-establishment politics more generally?
  5. Do users shape algorithms, or do algorithms gradually shape users’ appetites and identities?
  6. Is AI’s greater danger persuasive false evidence, or making genuine evidence easier to dismiss?

Further reading and viewing

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