A problem that social media has caused is that a “wellness expert” with no scientific foundation has a much larger megaphone than actual scientists and experts. As humans, we are impressionable and prone to our confirmation bias. We are attracted to what’s popular, shiny, and easy to understand. We don’t like to face facts that are complex or make us feel uncomfortable. Instead, we would rather build our realities around our pre-established ideas.
As someone who has been nurturing and developing an open-source social networking technology, I am concerned and curious that how this situation can be improved by design. I don’t have the answers yet, but I have a hunch that it has something to do with mega large social media networks. Perhaps if we had distributed network of smaller social media pods, alternative facts wouldn’t propagate as fast and the network could moderate itself.
As I said, I don’t have the answers yet, but that’s one of the topics that keep me thinking these days