Scientific American
Flicking through your social media feed, an image strikes you. It is outrage-inducing, confirming long-held beliefs about a group or an issue. You quickly repost it while stating your viewpoint, signaling to your family and friends whom you stand with.

This is the kind of everyday, understandable response that has seen misinformation spread widely. But misinformation “solutions” are still based on a rational and ethical figure, an idealized human with no background or social ties, who carefully weighs up all the facts and arrives at “the truth,” contributing to a more civil public discourse.

Real people operate on hunches, loyalties and grudges. To combat misinformation, we need to start from this actually existing human, someone who is emotional, factional and frictional.

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