Social media platforms have been used to divide people and tilt elections. Can anything be done about it?

The question of disinformation in the modern age has become inextricable from the social media platforms that command so much personal attention — Facebook and Twitter in particular. 

These platforms do a lot of things, but one thing they do really well is feed on a kind of confirmation bias. And, as recent history has shown, people with agendas can leverage that bias to their advantage. 

What can be done about it? Beyond deleting their accounts or enacting a heightened regimen of personal vigilance, the average person is left to rely on government intervention or the willingness of the companies to police themselves. 

For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we speak with two authors who know a lot about social media, Jillian C. York and Andrew Marantz, about the likelihood that anything can be done, or will be done, about it.

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Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph