I would have agreed with you 5 or 10 years ago, full stop.
Today, we live in a society where crackpot ideas are being shared by acquaintances, but unlike 10 years ago there is no common sense and logic being applied at the value and factual nature of the information. The systems are designed and layered in such a way that a person gets a bit of information, that information is highly compounded in their world view, other ideas are not in their funnel. Even if they go and try to validate it (which they may not because everything else in the funnel on their information streams supports/compounds the view) there are whole markets of pseudo news that are entertainment channels masquerading as news supporting the same insane ideas.
These systems act as badly as a schizophrenic thought process slowly detaching the participants from reality as the information they see compounds their world view.
I see the problem. But I don't think that filtering input is a solution. Fixing the processing, that is, critical thinking, looks more efficacious to me.
That is, to me the solution is to help people become less religious / partisan / rooting for the in-group, and become more independent and critical. It's indeed pretty hard to do when most major information streams work in the opposite direction.
Some of my hope is in the built-in protest of teenagers and youth; some in the idea that people with a developed taste would stay away from echo chambers and outrage machines for esthetic reasons, among others.
Today, we live in a society where crackpot ideas are being shared by acquaintances, but unlike 10 years ago there is no common sense and logic being applied at the value and factual nature of the information. The systems are designed and layered in such a way that a person gets a bit of information, that information is highly compounded in their world view, other ideas are not in their funnel. Even if they go and try to validate it (which they may not because everything else in the funnel on their information streams supports/compounds the view) there are whole markets of pseudo news that are entertainment channels masquerading as news supporting the same insane ideas.
These systems act as badly as a schizophrenic thought process slowly detaching the participants from reality as the information they see compounds their world view.