How the Digital Switchboard Turns Conformity into Evil

We humans are disturbingly malleable and conformist, and the digital age has made it exceptionally easy to turn us into banal, evil creatures. History’s worst crimes are not usually carried out by cartoon villains. They are carried out by ordinary people who tell themselves they are only following orders, only keeping the peace, only doing what the moment requires. Jonathan Miltimore’s excellent piece The Science of Manipulation gets at a hard truth people do not like to face: evil does not usually arrive with horns. It arrives through weakness, fear, and conformity. A lot of people prefer the idea that...