Battle for Your Brain

How the Internet is Supercharging Misinformation - and How to Stop It

For my master's thesis, I engaged in a year-long investigation of political misinformation and its primary causes. I quickly learned there were too many to count: widespread media illiteracy and social isolation, addictive web and app interfaces, increasing political polarization, and unstable democratic institutions.

So how do you come back from the decline of democracy? First, we need our legislative efforts to be more specific and cohesive, so we can respond to it in the short term. Next, we need to address the algorithms that magnity this content. And third, we need to imagine a new internet free of microtargeted advertising. So let's begin.

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