[DaUR]

Every media is biased, especially TV since it's so segregated by ideology.

The problem is people being emotionally invested and biased. Many Trump supporters will look at the Politifact rating posted higher in the thread, and call Politifact "fake news" whereas the reasoning they give is solid. They wouldn't give Politifact a chance, or build counterarguments, but just throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is on both sides, and many people.

No technology can fix that, unless it's really subtle and targeted (in other words, be mindful of your audience).

[thomk]

I think technology can help.

Your point about people being emotionally invested and biased is a valid one. There are a lot of smart people on both sides of the political spectrum, so, a while ago I decided to venture into the other side. I listened to all the popular talking heads and read what they read and spoke to many of them to find out what they believe and why.

I found it hard to believe that so many people are suffering from mass delusion, so, I asked friends and family what they believed. I tried, the best I could, to put myself in their shoes and remove my own biases.

In my very unscientific little, flawed study with a far too small sampling of people I found out a few things that everyone probably already knows:

1. Confirmation bias is real. Yes of course people tend to read the news they agree with, but, they also live and work around people who they mostly agree with. You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most.

2. Social Proof is a big factor. Is EXTREMELY difficult to change your viewpoint because you are fighting against social proof. Have you ever noticed that young people tend to dress the same as their friends. You'll see two young people walking along and wearing just a slight variation of the exact same outfit. Two 16 year old boys both wearing striped shirt, hat on backwards, ripped jeans and untied basketball shoes. That is social proof.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_proof

Now imagine coming into your job where you are among your peers saying the opposite of what all of us believed yesterday: you'd be rejected even if it was based on evidence.

Don Draper knew it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9rrhKgusYs

3. They simply focus on different subject matter. Not "alternative facts" different things all together; "Spin". "Yes my politician did do the horrible thing you are saying, BUT, look at THIS great honest thing he did."

4. Its exhausting. You are attempting to fight against the belief system that you've trusted and your peers support possibly your whole life. You are hearing and reading things that you have a negative visceral reaction to and it's very, VERY hard to keep listening to or reading it.

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The idea that an average person can spend the time to find out what is actually, objectively, completely true is unrealistic.

In my opinion a great first step is to give everyone a quick, free, way that simply points to the source of each story. That eliminates the echo chamber and cuts through a lot of bullshit.

At that point we can at least think about some sort of truth level indicator.

[DaUR]

Great comment. Agree with you on the solutions (sourcing).

I don't have a clearly defined political identity, so, mostly by accident at first, I tried changing my own ideology. I discovered every ideology has a pretty much coherent worldview. Just frame the world in a way that's unjust, and threatens you personally in some way, assign low social status to opponents, and make it a part of my identity. It's crazy how I managed to identify with everyone from the social-justice-left to the alt-right, including the Clintonites, Trumpers and social conservatives in between). Fun to do if you want to learn about cognitive dissonance.

The only thing that determines which ideology you end up with isn't facts, but temperament (personality) and social circle.

All of these ideologies are coherent, and therefore don't provoke much cognitive dissonance (if they did these ideologies wouldn't be evolutionarily "fit", and the ideologies would die out). BTW, if Facebook wanted to be more evil/involved, they could change the political opinions of vast swathes of the population by deliberately triggering cognitive dissonance, and then exposing them to material from the other side when they're much more receptive to it. The only reason why that doesn't work so often currently is that cognitive dissonance hasn't yet been completely weaponized, but as we understand it more, it will be.