6. 朗读-真相：信息超载时代，我们该相信什么

6. Information Overload Helps Fake News Spread, and Social MediaKnows It

科学美国人

We preferinformation from people we trust, our in-group. We pay attention to and aremore likely to share information about risks. We search for and remember thingsthat fit well with what we already know and understand. These biases areproducts of our evolutionary past, and for tens of thousands of years, theyserved us well.

Moderntechnologies are amplifying these biases in harmful ways, however. Searchengines direct us to sites that inflame our suspicions, and social mediaconnects us with like-minded people, feeding our fears. Making matters worse,bots enable misguided or malevolent actors to take advantage of hisvulnerabilities.

Compoundingthe problem is the proliferation of online information. Viewing and producingblogs, videos, tweets and other units of information called memes has become socheap and easy that the information marketplace is inundated. Unable to processall this material, we let our cognitive biases decide what we should payattention to. These mental shortcuts influence which information we search for,comprehend, remember and repeat to a harmful extent.

The glut ofinformation has generated intense competition for people's attention. One ofthe first consequences of the so-called attention economy is the loss ofhigh-quality information. Even when we want to see and share high-qualityinformation, our inability to view everything in our news feeds inevitablyleads us to share things that are partly or completely untrue.

Cognitivebiases greatly worsen the problem. Our minds adjust our understanding of newinformation so that it fits in with what we already know. But experimentsconsistently show that even when people encounter balanced informationcontaining views from differing perspectives, they tend to find supportingevidence for what they already believe.

Social mediacan also increase our negativity. Social media amplifies homophily by allowingusers to alter their social network structures through following, unfriending,and so on. The result is that people become segregated into large, dense andincreasingly misinformed communities commonly described as echo chambers.

Anumber of tools have been produced to help people understand their ownvulnerabilities, as well as the weaknesses of social media platforms. Theseprogrammatic tools are important aids, but institutional changes are alsonecessary to curb the proliferation of fake news. Education can help, althoughit is unlikely to encompass all the topics on which people are misled. One ofthe best ideas may be to make it more difficult to create and share low-qualityinformation. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay toshare or receive information.