100%.

When I think about it for a while, my thoughts always come back to "What is truth? What is a fact? Why do I think my news consumption is more factual than this person's news consumption?"

I'm not a philosopher, and I think it's a tricky question to answer. I've found myself on the Stanford Philosophy Wiki. There's a ton of good stuff in there.

Of course, on a practical level, you're rarely going to be debating "what is a fact?" when you're arguing with your MAGA relations. My "normal" answer is that I try to get my news from sources that have reputations for fact-checking / rigor (AP / Reuters etc etc).

However, if you've spent all your time consuming Fox / Newsmax / AM Radio in the late 90s / aughts, your mental model of AP / Reuters is not my mental model. Anything outside of your right-wing bubble is to be shinned. To you, AP and Reuters do not have a reputation for rigor. They're part of a liberal conspiracy funded by the government and George Soros to demonize conservatives / brainwash the libs.

It's a tricky problem. I feel like we're in an era where the Dawn of the Internet / Social media is analogous to the advent of the printing press. We just don't know how to handle the firehose of information.

There's a huge part of me that thinks that recommendation algorithms need to be regulated.