View from the right:
North Bay man behind Mr. Conservative blog muses on the lost art of debate.
On the eve of the presidential inauguration, as Donald Trump prepared to take the oath of office and millions of Americans readied themselves to march in opposition, the man behind a blog called Mr. Conservative mused about the lost art of debate.
Cyrus Massoumi, 25, has been in the business of clickbait headlines and spreading what he calls “tilted news,” or information with a hard-right point of view, since he graduated from Redwood High School.
He oversees his conservative website and an accompanying Facebook page with more than 2.2 million fans from a liberal stronghold in the North Bay. He reads National Review and listens to Bill Maher — and enjoys debating with Bernie Sanders supporters as much as he does agitating those he calls “the idiots” in his own party.
He’s a Trump supporter, though he didn’t vote.
And he’s worried about what the next several years may bring — not for politics, but rather for society as tech companies grapple with what to do about hyper-partisan websites and fake news and, in some cases, struggle to tell the difference.
“Conservative media is being hunted down by Facebook,” he said. “So in order for us to not get flagged or have our account suspended for seven days, we’re actually self-censoring because hate speech and fake news — even if it isn’t actually fake — has become such a concern.”
Lies and misinformation on the Internet have become a focal point for many in postelection America as companies, people and media organizations grapple with the impact of fast-spreading falsehoods on discourse and politics.
Many have thrust blame onto Internet companies like Facebook and Google, which act as conduits of information for the vast majority of computer-using adults. They argue that tech firms should do more to set facts and trustworthy information apart.
Researchers from Ohio State University have found what they believe is a direct link between hyper-partisan information — the kind peddled on Massoumi’s Mr. Conservative site — and fake news. Namely, those who get their information from far-right or far-left publications are more likely to believe false information, too.
A Stanford University study released this week found that social media may not have played as big a role in the election as people think — though researchers did not reach a conclusion on the extent to which fake news may have swayed the results.
But Massoumi blames the media — all of it — for creating a system in which a carefully crafted headline can have more impact than a lengthy, in-depth investigation.
“I’m uncomfortable where the news market has gone — and that’s saying something, because for a while, I was the bad guy, I was the worst guy out there,” he said. “Stories that go viral are stories that make you seem like you’re smart or good or caring or funny. Every news organization does this. They play to people’s superiority complexes.”
Massoumi was an early player in the game of manipulating news headlines to tap into people’s anger and fear to gain influence and clicks — and cash. He started his first publication while he was a student at Redwood High School in Larkspur.
It was the first time he realized how unwilling people were to engage in a debate with those with whom they disagree, he said.
“I would love nothing more than to have a debate with a liberal ... and put that up on Facebook,” he said. “But that’s not what people want. People want Sean Hannity to get angry. It’s the outrage machine.”
Ohio State Professor Kelly Garrett said this unwillingness to debate and examine one’s own beliefs is what drives people to partisan sources and fake news.
Liberal and conservative news outlets alike, he said, tap into anger and fear, which drive a wedge between people along ideological lines that can be hard to bridge.
Massoumi said it was this vilification of the political “other” that drove him to start his site.
As a teenager in Marin, he said, he was surrounded by liberal Democrats who supported Barack Obama. He started his first online publication, the Deadwood Barf — a parody of the Redwood High newspaper, the Redwood Bark — to issue satirical attacks on liberal causes. He was suspended for handing out fliers advertising his website.
The experience invigorated him.
Soon, he found his way onto conservative Facebook pages, where he helped other publishers attract more readers with outrageous headlines.
Massoumi comes from a liberal, Muslim family. He grew up watching TV host Bill Maher — whom he still counts as one of his idols. He likes strong opinions, and consumes information from people at political extremes. He thinks that’s the only way to determine the truth.
Garrett, the Ohio State professor, said that before the Internet, most media organizations largely reported the same information. Opinions were kept separate from news. Today, much of that is muddled, with partisan websites and television channels mixing news, rumor and innuendo.
Garrett said partisan news may have inadvertently set readers up to believe the fake stuff, but it’s not that simple.
“It’s very easy to have a bad guy, but ... these websites like Mr. Conservative and others are not out there destroying the world,” he said. “But when you have an outlet that primarily is the ideological drumbeat — ‘Look at all these terrible things that people on the other side have done’ — it mobilizes people while also undermining all of the institutions around which we have historically found common ground.”
Despite the outrageous rhetoric on his website, Massoumi said he’s not against finding common ground. And he draws a clear distinction between what he does and fake news, which he calls disgusting.
The stories on his site have headlines that lambaste liberal politicians and praise conservative ones. He said he insists on including links to outside sources; nothing on his website is independently reported.
But that distinction doesn’t prevent critics from lumping the site in with fake-news outlets as social media companies like Facebook come up with easier ways to report and remove false information. Facebook announced last month that it would work with independent fact-checkers to verify stories circulating on the social network as part of a series of experiments designed to contain the spread of misinformation.
It’s unclear whether partisan websites like his will be subject to the same kind of review, but Massoumi said several of his social network posts have been flagged or removed without explanation.
On Friday, Massoumi won’t be worrying about that. He’ll be looking forward. To a first 100 days of fodder, a change in the political tide and his own plan to fight back against fake news, possibly helped by Facebook’s emphasis on video.
“Video is the future of Facebook, and it could flush out all the fake news,” he said. “It’s much harder to make things up and get everything wrong on video. It’s going to be huge, as Trump would say.”