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I don’t think the root cause here is excessive trust in preferred sources. What’s actually at play here, is most peoples weakness at perspective taking. Truly u

I don’t think the root cause here is excessive trust in preferred sources. What’s actually at play here, is most peoples weakness at perspective taking. Truly understanding a given issue requires the ability to have your own perspective and to give equal credence to the other plausible perspectives. Many people do not pause to consider alien perspectives, and are disoriented when confronted with them. Therefore, they don’t seek out alien perspectives in order to avoid the sense of disorientation that would result, and that’s why they stick to media that share their perspective, and even punish said media when it offers alternative perspectives. People have always been this way, but the Internet and social media are really not helping.

didericis 4y ago
The opposite is also true. People who love seeking out alien perspectives have a virtually unlimited amount of ability to find and commingle with whatever community they can think of online. I think the optimism of the early internet was due to a dominance of users with that kind of personality. It wasn’t apparent to that type of person that others are not excited by that perspective hopping opportunity and not only would not take advantage of it once being online was more accessible, but would actively use the same technology to further silo and entrench themselves.