Cass Sunstein’s 2007 piece – The Polarization of Extremes
– was prescient:
The unintended consequences of the internet age:
How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth (NYTIMES)
“A wider variety of news sources was supposed to be
the bulwark of a rational age — “the marketplace of ideas,” the boosters called
it. But that’s not how any of this works. Psychologists and other social
scientists have repeatedly shown that when confronted with diverse information
choices, people rarely act like rational,
civic-minded automatons. Instead, we are roiled by preconceptions and
biases, and we usually do what feels easiest — we gorge on information that
confirms our ideas, and we shun what does not.”
THE FAILURE OF FACEBOOK DEMOCRACY by
Nathan Heller
Facebook and the Prevalence of Disinformation