Why America No Longer Believes Its Own Eyes

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2. I am pessimistic on the future of Democracy for many of these reasons

But I think Social Media is the biggest culprit.

No doubt the primary media is a travesty these days. Certainly, the breakdown of "news" sources into politically aligned parties is bad for democracy. Even if you get beyond the issues of misinformation and fear monitoring it just isn't healthy for an electorate to have multiple versions of reality.

But it is in social media where this stew really cooks to a boil. What used to be a single self-selected source of news becomes a constant stream of algorithm driven posts. It generates the illusion that any person's given view point is universal and foolproof. And it takes people down rabbit holes to make them even more extreme. In some cases it is just the algorithm doing what it is designed to do. In other cases it is partisan actors spoon feeding the faithful and getting them cranked up. Sometimes it is just bad actors looking for clicks knowing that outrage gets eyes (truth or not)

And I say this with all honesty, we are not immune from it. We are certainly not as bad but we definitely have narrowed our field of intake as well. To some degree on purpose but largely because it is what our sources do to us.

Everyone is living in their own little universe and the social media sites are feeding us exactly what we want to see to make us stay there.