This fits very nicely into “that agrees with your worldview perfectly” but I am skeptical of articles that see the world as full of hapless passive consumers of information. When I sit one on one with pretty much anyone we can usually come to an agreement if aggression is put aside, which leads me conclude that the reasons for why people are susceptible to poor information is not as simple as the power of algorithms in social media. This is part of the weapons people use, but fear and hysteria have been part of humanity long before even the printing press was invented. One explanation for susceptibility could be the competition between survival and active engagement in reality, and it’s possible that competition for resources and logical thinking have a negative correlation. I think this article has a nice summary of part of the issue but falls short in considering other variables. The audience who will probably lap this up the most is the one it’s describing, those who want to blame their own intellectual laziness and failure to manage cognitive priorities on anyone other than themselves.