Let’s End Our Political Shouting Matches

Our country feels more divided than ever.

We live in echo chambers. It’s a huge problem and it’s tearing us apart. I think it is both fascinating and terrifying that…

• 50% of Americans say that talking about politics with people they disagree with is stressful and frustrating
• 72% of US adults think that news organizations tend to favor one side when presenting the news on political and social issues
• 71% of online readers say that they read news sites that agree with their own views

This problem isn’t going to go away any time soon. Google and Facebook allow businesses and news organizations to target their content with frightening levels of specificity. I learned this first-hand when I started trying to build a following for my Abridge’s social media posts. When I “boost” our posts, I can specify whether I want to send my content to “those likely to engage with liberal content”, “those likely to engage with conservative content”, or both.

Most businesses and news sites love this targeting. It helps them get better click-through rates, drive traffic, and make more money off of digital ads. But this reliance on targeting has a downside. These same businesses and news sites are not incentivized to send liberal content to conservatives or conservative content to liberals. Readers don’t “like”, “share”, or “engage” nearly as much with content they disagree with.

Consequently, our world-views are diverging more and more. We subscribe or visit news sites with op-eds that we agree with. We live with neighbors who tend to look, work and behave like us. We gravitate towards friends who share our political beliefs. We make nasty caricatures of those who disagree with us. It’s no surprise that we feel more divided than ever.

With a little empathy and effort, things can improve.

Here’s the good news… we can make things better. We may disagree over how to solve a problem. We may disagree over which problems should be solved first. But deep down, we all fundamentally want what’s best for our country. And I think we can all agree that today’s political shouting matches are not good for us.

I started Abridge News because I strongly believe in the power of empathy. One of my favorite quotes from the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird” describes this perfectly:

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

There’s a reason why this book is required reading for almost every high school student in the country. It teaches a universal lesson — one that we too often forget.

Abridge News helps readers consider opposing views.

We want our readers to engage with ALL sides of the debate. To make this happen, we carefully read op-eds from across the internet. Then, we select and summarize multiple articles that represent logical, well-articulated points of view on opposing sides of a debate. We don’t highlight “fake news”.

We try to make this fun for our readers too. Our readers can swipe right to see op-eds on a topic with a more conservative bias or they can swipe left to see op-eds with a more liberal spin.

Abridge intentionally doesn’t present a middle-ground or unbiased view on a topic — this is because we think that bias tends to creep into everything. Instead, we trust that our readers can use these different points of view to formulate their own opinions. And most importantly, by engaging with all sorts of views, our readers will begin to understand how somebody — who is just as smart as they are — may form different opinions.

By considering opposing views, we will be less likely to judge and more likely to empathize. Once this happens, we will finally be able to end our political shouting matches and engage in productive, respectful debate.

We would love your support and feedback. If you are interested in being an early adopter for our product (expected to be ready Fall 2017), sign up for our waitlist at https://abridgenews.com