“Manufactured Division”: How Social Media Is Driving Anger and Polarization | Pivot
Scott Galloway (host), Kara Swisher (host), Narrator, Narrator, Bobbi Brown (guest)
In this episode of Pivot, featuring Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, “Manufactured Division”: How Social Media Is Driving Anger and Polarization | Pivot explores algorithms, Authoritarians, And Anger: How Tech Fuels Manufactured Division Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway argue that much of today’s political rage—especially around immigration and campus culture—is being deliberately manufactured by politicians and amplified by social media algorithms optimized for engagement and profit. They frame Trump-era ICE raids, masked federal agents, and attacks on judges as fascist theatrics meant to create internal enemies rather than real security. In parallel, they criticize big tech and AI firms like OpenAI, Meta, and social platforms for exploiting user data, creators’ IP, and youth attention while offering only cosmetic safeguards. Throughout, they connect these trends to broader economic shifts in media, Hollywood, telecoms, and universities, warning that unregulated tech power is reshaping society, eroding trust, and widening inequality.
Algorithms, Authoritarians, And Anger: How Tech Fuels Manufactured Division
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway argue that much of today’s political rage—especially around immigration and campus culture—is being deliberately manufactured by politicians and amplified by social media algorithms optimized for engagement and profit. They frame Trump-era ICE raids, masked federal agents, and attacks on judges as fascist theatrics meant to create internal enemies rather than real security. In parallel, they criticize big tech and AI firms like OpenAI, Meta, and social platforms for exploiting user data, creators’ IP, and youth attention while offering only cosmetic safeguards. Throughout, they connect these trends to broader economic shifts in media, Hollywood, telecoms, and universities, warning that unregulated tech power is reshaping society, eroding trust, and widening inequality.
Key Takeaways
Authoritarian-style immigration theatrics are designed to divide, not protect.
The deployment of National Guard troops, masked ICE agents, and aggressive raids in cities like Chicago and Portland are framed as fascist tactics that create a sense of internal enemies, intimidate communities, and generate viral images of cruelty—without meaningfully improving public safety.
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Social media platforms and algorithms systemically monetize anger and tribalism.
Swisher and Galloway emphasize that platforms make more money when users are outraged and siloed; rage-inducing content about ICE abuses or culture-war issues is surfaced because it drives engagement and ad revenue, even though most Americans are less divided in real life than online feeds suggest.
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Tech companies cannot be trusted to self-regulate on privacy, kids’ safety, or IP.
From Apple and Google pulling ICE-tracking apps under government pressure, to Meta’s ineffective teen safety tools, to OpenAI’s initial opt-out stance on copyrighted content, the hosts argue that platforms consistently privilege growth and profit over user rights, children’s wellbeing, and creators’ ownership.
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AI and streaming are hollowing out Hollywood’s creative middle class.
Galloway links Netflix’s global production arbitrage and the coming wave of generative AI to the erosion of well-paid behind-the-scenes jobs in LA (crew, costume, sound, animators), suggesting wealth and opportunity are being sucked from Southern California to Silicon Valley and global tax-haven production hubs.
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Banning or strictly age-gating youth social media use is more realistic than “safety features.”
Given strong evidence that mobile social media correlates with teen anxiety and depression, they argue for hard legal limits: no social media under 16 and no synthetic/AI relationships under 18, noting that parental controls alone can’t work if every other kid is still on the platforms.
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Universities should be reformed through competition, not politicized thought control.
Galloway says federal funding can have strings, but Trump’s proposed compact—limiting ideological leanings, capping foreign students, and imposing price controls—amounts to unenforceable thought policing and self-defeating export restrictions, when better solutions include ending early decision, breaking pricing cartels, and tying tax benefits to enrollment growth.
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Concentrated tech infrastructure power (e.g., Starlink spectrum control) has geopolitical stakes.
SpaceX’s acquisition of EchoStar spectrum and direct-to-phone capability could upend legacy telcos and enable global mobile services—but also raises concerns about a single politically volatile billionaire controlling critical communication rails tied to both commercial markets and military contracts.
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Notable Quotes
“Fascism, the juice of fascism, is trying to convince people that the enemy is within.”
— Scott Galloway
“We're not that divided. We're just being divided.”
— Scott Galloway (citing and agreeing with Thomas Friedman)
“These people should not be trusted with our information or decision-making about our society… it is heroin, and it will not end well if we don't take some control of this.”
— Kara Swisher, on social media platforms
“They are rapacious information thieves. You don't own this, get your dirty mitts off of it or pay the people who made it in the first place.”
— Kara Swisher, on OpenAI and copyright
“No one under the age of 16 should be allowed on a social media platform… a 15-year-old smoking cigarettes is less dangerous than a 15-year-old on Instagram.”
— Scott Galloway
Questions Answered in This Episode
If most Americans are “not that divided,” what concrete regulatory steps could reduce the ability of social platforms to profit from rage and division?
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway argue that much of today’s political rage—especially around immigration and campus culture—is being deliberately manufactured by politicians and amplified by social media algorithms optimized for engagement and profit. ...
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How should societies balance the security value of government surveillance tools with individuals’ emerging right to digital privacy and “having secrets”?
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What legal and economic frameworks could fairly compensate artists and creators when their work is used to train or populate AI systems like Sora?
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Given the documented mental health harms, what would it realistically take—politically and culturally—to implement an under-16 social media ban?
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Are we underestimating the risks of allowing a small number of tech firms and CEOs to control critical communication infrastructure such as global satellite-to-phone networks?
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Transcript Preview
I never used to think about it before, but now I think literally anything I write down somewhere, the government might have.
You also shove everything into ChatGPT, serious. I don't do it at all, but-
Oh, I love it. Yeah, I'm in-
I know.
... I'm definitely in a-
You're very promiscuous-
Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of-
... with your information.
I am. Gotta be promiscuous somewhere.
(instrumental music) Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
How you doing today, Scott?
I'm good. I got a little bit of the, the, uh, the X-bar hangover. Did a xanny last night, 4:00 AM, couldn't sleep.
What? Wh-
Are you having trouble sleeping when you're al- I mean, I-
I, I am. I, uh, I wake up at 4:18 every night.
(sighs) I'm turning into one of those people that's just like a ghost walking around the house.
No, I don't walk.
I used to be such a good sleeper.
Yeah, you're supposed to do that. You're supposed to get up and walk around, just so you know. Not, not try to go to sleep lying there.
Yeah. Uh, what did I watch? I've been watching... Uh, uh, you know what? Uh. I'll watch anything with my favorite actor, Hitler.
(laughs) Okay.
I just type in "World War II"-
Okay.
... and I watch the Battle of the Bulge in color. Um, I'm obsessed with World War II.
Yeah, a lot of-
I'm officially-
Yeah.
... 100 years old.
Not Rome? I, usually men are Rome, but Rome or Hitler usually seems to be the things-
Rome.
... men of your age like to watch.
No, no, I don't.
Not Rome?
No.
No.
No.
Why don't you ask me what I did this weekend?
Oh, I'm sorry. What'd you do this weekend?
I had a mermaid party.
Oh.
Yeah. It was so-
So that obviously was for Lucky, not for one of your kids.
(laughs) No, it was for Clara. It was, like, so, it was so interesting 'cause all the girls showed up in mermaid outfits, every single one of them. And, and they were fantastic, let me just say, versions of mermaids, all kinds of spangles and this and that. All the guy- all the boys, there were many, showed up in superhero costumes. Interesting.
Yeah. I- if- if anyone wants to believe gender's not a thing-
Yeah.
... just have a party and bu- invite boys and girls over-
Yeah.
... and see what they do.
Trust.
Put a room full of dolls-
Yeah.
... and cars and see what happens.
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