Online, each tribe inhabits its own filter bubble of partisan news. To blame this only on Facebook is unfair. If people wanted a range of views, they could install both rightwing and leftwing feeds on their Facebook pages — The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, say. Most people choose not to, partly because they like living in their tribe. It makes them feel less lonely.
That made me think of being adrift at sea with no drinking water, you’re very likely going to be tempted to drink some of that is available around you, except sea water will dehydrate you even faster.
Facebook seems to make lonely people feel lonelier, the sad thing is, if making people feel lonelier makes them use the platform more then there’s an incentive to keep making people feel that way. So even if that’s not Facebook’s intention and the only thing they do is follow metrics then you can picture an evolutionary path that reinforces the same problems Facebook was initially trying to improve.
I think Zuckerberg has recognized the problem without really saying exactly what it is. He's trying to fix it because it goes against his core mission of connecting people in a better way. I give him some credit for this.
"They 'trust me.' Dumb fucks" - Mark Zuckerberg, 2004. Facebook is not going to fix the problems they're leveraging to make billions of dollars.
It is really hard to just read the right and left wing feeds objectively. The level of polarization, misrepresentation, lying, and smearing is too great. The best I can do now is just read the source feeds from news agencies like Reuters, do independent research, have in-person conversations, and hope for the best.