The Solution and Antidote to Viral Fake News. VFN Anti-venom.

We get hundreds of articles in Medium on how to be more productive, more sexually attractive, happier, fulfilled, more spiritual and how to live a healthier life — all well intended. Politics of course are off the chart with misinformation — also by the way well intended. I have friends and family across the whole spectrum of USA and world residents (far right pro-Trump, far left beyond Bernie Sanders socialists, undocumented illegal immigrants, sociologists, religious, sentimentalists, philosophical and the (“don’t talk to me anti-political”) cynics who send pet pics, music and weird nature things (etc.) — I get all flavors of viral “news”. I spot check and the more opinion focused usually the less fact based.

Like many others I wonder from where and from who all this originates and what artificially stimulates a subject to viral levels. The popular answer is diverse sources seeking “clicks” for ads, extremists groups, algorithms (blame Google), maybe disruptive foreign agencies and sometimes just popularity contests.

Perhaps wondering about the source and “why” and fuming about “fake news” is like blaming Latin American cartels for the drug problem. It’s in large part untrue and useless to blame and battle drug traffickers. For the most part illegal drug demand and use is generated by Americans who for personal, cultural, sociological, economical and so forth motives want drugs and create the demand.

Perhaps it’s time the average American citizen, we, deliberately chooses to break our personal addiction to subjective self validating echo chamber. Perhaps we begin to encourage not a consideration of “our” viewpoint but a habit to move to diverse and logically skeptical viewpoint.

Lori E. Cameron, Senior Writer, IEEE Computer Science, wrote an article last year that I liked. Ms. Cameron tended to put emphasis on technological controls and mechanisms.

I propose this: We are not taking even 10% of our personal responsibility to identify and do steps to end our echo chamber, escalating bias and polarized viewpoints. We are addicts and don’t want to admit we have a problem. Let’s “12 Step” our epidemic of personal bigotry starting with a simple statement: “We admitted we were powerless over our habit of self gratifying unvalidated and unbalanced information bias and our lives had become unmanageable.”