[chiefalchemist]

Fake news is the symptom. The disease is confirmation bias.

The internet, and particularly social media, has become the most efficient and effective confirmation bias machine ever. People gladly (read: voluntarily) crawl into their self-fulfilling echo chamber and instantly become the master of their own universe. They get to believe whatever it is they want to believe. No assumption too strange. No "belief fetish" too bizarre.

I'm not sure what the answer is (aside from a mass education in critical thinking and self-awareness), but I do know that deleting FB is a balloon grab. That is, the disease will simply manifest itself somewhere else sooner or later.

[panarky]

> Fake news is the symptom. The disease is confirmation bias.

When your root-cause analysis turns up an intractable problem that can't be solved, then maybe turn the intractable problem against itself.

Instead of eliminating filter bubbles and confirmation bias, encourage them. Herd the haters, trolls and propagandists into their own subgroups and shadow-ban them so people outside the group can't see them.

It doesn't solve the problem of confirmation bias, but it might help contain it and prevent wider contamination.

[mrguyorama]

>mass education in critical thinking and self-awareness

Does not fix confirmation bias, because people who are in deep in their own little holes don't want to know

[chiefalchemist]

No argument from me. I was being over the top. We're not going to mass educate critical thinking, too many other paper tigers would fall,that's for sure. It's also difficult to scale it and get it to stick.

That said, I still think it's important to keep in mind that fake news is a symptom. Get that context wrong and any potential solutions are simply shooting at the wrong target.

[toasterlovin]

> We're not going to mass educate critical thinking, too many other paper tigers would fall,that's for sure. It's also difficult to scale it and get it to stick.

The bigger problem is that confirmation bias is an evolutionarily useful adaptation. Good luck fighting those.