There are a lot of valid and important ideas in Adam Curtis (and many, many others) documentaries people could benefit from exposing themselves to (Century of Self is another one that I believe is a must watch for citizens of a democracy).

A weird thing about this thread, and others like it, is that there seems to be this broadly shared implicit premise within the thread context that the feared ill effects of new technologies like this have not already been prevalent in our societies and information ecosystems for decades. In a thread about bias, fake news, propaganda, etc, people seem to have no problem realizing and acknowledging that we already have a very serious problem (often only visible in one's personal outgroup, but that's better than nothing) - but when the specific topic of conversation is a new technology, the majority of the comments seem to be written as if we don't really have any significant issues currently. It seems as if there's some sort of a phenomenon whereby the logical methodology for evaluation of the situation changes according to the topic, as opposed to there being a consistent methodology that at all times has an explicit awareness of the ever-present bigger picture.

Here's [1] an 8 minute video on Presidential debates. This fairly well demonstrates how this aspect of our political system is largely pure theatre...and yet, intelligent people often speak (again, depending on the specific(!) topic of discussion) as if this charade is highly legitimate process, within a larger political (and journalistic) process that is also highly legitimate.

The way I view the ecosystem is that the vast majority of things are to a very large extent ~fake (in whole or in part). Cranking up the absurdity to 11 in classic South Park style, making a complete mockery of both the politicians as well as those who can't consistently(!) conceptualize the true nature of our system, seems like an excellent response to a situation that has been sorely in need of some good old fashioned satirical mocking for decades. Western society & politics lost the right to be taken seriously ages ago - admitting to ourselves that there's a problem seems to me like a prerequisite first step in fixing it.

[1] Winning the Presidency: Debating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayz7zLn6uFU

I'm much more concerned about the inverse, not people getting fooled by fake content, but believing that anything that doesn't align with their views is fake. We can end up in a post truth society where someone like Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro or Orban can claim that any footage that is not politically advantageous to them is fake and created by an evil opposition to hurt their cause.

ex:

  Trump access hollywood tape -> fake Soros conspiracy to save the pedophiles

We'll have a lot more people believing conspiracies like the moon landing being fake and end up with a lot of 9/11, JFK, holocaust, etc deniers.

> I'm much more concerned about the inverse, not people getting fooled by fake content, but believing that anything that doesn't align with their views is fake. We can end up in a post truth society where someone like Trump, Duterte, Bolsonaro or Orban can claim that any footage that is not politically advantageous to them is fake and created by an evil opposition to hurt their cause.

I believe the optimum approach is to be concerned with all risks, and weigh the magnitude of each in a state of careful self-monitoring of one's potential biases (and ideally, have your conclusions reviewed by others, preferably from a diversity of ideologies and perspectives in an attempt to minimize the well known affects of groupthink). Noteworthy to me is that a significant number of people (if not the majority, depending on which community you are in) are easily able to see the epistemic errors in their outgroups thinking, but has more difficulty in doing the same within their ingroup.

For example, in your comment it seems that you have noticed shortcomings when it comes to politicians of one general ideology, but I wonder if you are of the belief that this phenomenon does not occur across all ideologies?