Abstract:

The past year has starkly illustrated how pervasive and deep-rooted the disinformation problem is in American society. We learned, for example, of the shocking revelations that the information associated with 87 million Facebook users had been illegally accessed by Cambridge Analytica. And we have been sequentially disheartened by news of data breach after data breach, each of which has discouraged any faith we might have had that Silicon Valley can effectively regulate itself to fight digital disinformation.

Centrally responsible for the stubbornness of the disinformation problem is the business model that sits at the heart of the internet itself—a business model that is premised on (1) the creation of borderline-addictive web-based services that enjoy a network effect; (2) the unchecked collection of personal data through those services to create behavioral profiles; and (3) the development and implementation of opaque algorithms that curate content in our social feeds and target ads at us.

These practices are as remarkably simple as they are exploitative of our individual autonomy, and they align well with the phenomenon of motivated cognition—the idea that the way in which individuals perceive, interact and operate in their environment is biased towards achieving an outcome most favorable to them. This phenomenon is manifested across a variety of societal contexts, including inflated self-appraisals for positive personality traits and the tendency to consume and endorse new information consistent with one’s prior belief system.