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Getting All Your News From Facebook Is Like Eating Only Potato Chips, Flipboard CEO Says (recode.net)
In a wide-ranging interview, Mike McCue, CEO of news curator app Flipboard, talked about how -- and from where -- people get their news nowadays and how it shapes their worldview. From a report: McCue said getting all your news from either friends or algorithms is "challenging and semi-dangerous" because today's social platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, favor content that people engage with, driving "extremist" content to the top. Hence, he argues, the "fake news" epidemic, which McCue believes had an effect on the 2016 election. "Sometimes I think of news feeds as the 'mystery meat' of your information diet," he said. "It's not like you finish reading your Facebook feed, after half an hour, and feel like, 'That was a great use of time!' It's like if you ate potato chips all day long."
You could say the same thing about any single news source. My father-in-law gets all his news from the paper version of the wall street journal and whatever nonsense the local evening news is spouting off that day plus a bit of Rush Limbaugh. Needless to say he has a rather narrow and unhealthy world view because he never hears any ideas that contradict what he already believes. Getting your news from a single source or even a narrow group of sources is almost certain to result is a very weird view of how the world should work.
Who the hell is getting any of their news from Facebook? It doesn't even offer news as a service.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, "necessary", "sufficient", and "useful" are all distinct concepts.
In the heyday of the print newspaper, editorial functions included a kind of curation: assigning reporters to stories or "beats", and choosing the mix stories that make up the day's edition.
Clearly, curatorial work is useful -- both in service of the truth and in the service of falsehood. And because it can be used both ways, it is clearly not sufficient for obtaining the truth. However curation (at the very least by you) of your information sources is probably necessary.
The goal of curating your information sources shouldn't be a capital T Truth, it should be to be informed. That means having enough of the Truth from enough different sources to be able to make better decisions. If you find yourself too much in agreement with the opinions of the news sources you trust, you aren't getting enough information to think for yourself. Nobody who thinks for himself can ever be entirely comfortable with the opinions of others.
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