"Why we love liking junk news that reaffirms our beliefs" (PBS)

[money detonator]

PBS NewsHour's piece on confirmation bias and addiction to it in our political news:

https://youtu.be/64A-x8LnX-I





What is interesting about the people interviewed is that they know something is amiss with their addiction to the material, and they are willing to admit that, as well as admitting that the material is manipulative.  However, they are insistent in their denial of being influenced, and keep repeating that they have always held their beliefs and that what they believe came from within themselves, which I don't buy.

[money detonator]

This is an earlier segment in the series.  Here they talk to a man in Northern California who made millions running many different hyper-partisan web sites and Facebook pages (covering all political sides and biases), then flooded FB with ads and promoted clickbait posts, to drive traffic to his web sites, making money off running ads and selling stuff to them.  He's been doing it for 8 years.  He admits what he's doing is bad for society, but he doesn't care because it pays his bills.   He says his ultra conservative and pro-Trump material generated the most money, but it died off in popularity after Trump was elected.  If this is true in general, it probably explains why Molyneux has stopped doing his non-stop pro-Trump material.


Online anger is gold to this junk-news pioneer

https://youtu.be/YKCOAL6EPFE

[Kronze21]

I guess that's why there are still some people who still actually believe the main stream media like CNN despite all the grabage they peddle.