How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth

Next week, if all goes well, someone will win the presidency. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Will the losing side believe the results? Will the bulk of Americans recognize the legitimacy of the new president? And will we all be able to clean up the piles of lies, hoaxes and other dung that have been hurled so freely in this hyper-charged, fact-free election? Much of that remains unclear, because the Internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. Polls show that many of us have burrowed into our own echo chambers of information.

For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case. If you study the dynamics of how information moves online today, pretty much everything conspires against truth.