On the morning of April 8, the New York Stock Exchange was clouded by thick tension. Six days had passed since Donald Trump announced his new “Liberation Day” tariffs, and after historic tumbles in the stock market, investors desperately searched for signs that a trade war would not come to pass.
Stock prices surged at 10:12 a.m. and cheers erupted from the trading room floor as news of a 90-day tariff pause began to spread. But the cheers were quickly muted and stock prices were pulled back down when a grim realization swept over the investors — they had been duped by a single unsourced post on X.
This was not an isolated event but a microcosm of our new era — one in which the algorithms of social media hold sway over not only the markets but also politics and the very concept of truth.
The role of social media in news consumption is growing exponentially. As of September 2024, 54% of U.S. adults claim to get their news from social media “at least sometimes,” with over half of TikTok and X users saying they turn regularly to these platforms for news. Because of this, cable viewership is in decline and the control over information that TV news once had is unraveling. Given a choice between pre-programmed television and curated digital content, modern man chose the latter.
Each user’s feed is curated by an algorithm. While the technical aspects of each are shrouded in mystery, they all operate to hand-select and promote content to users based on their specific preferences and behavior. Because of this, social media platforms tend to thrust their users into echo chambers — environments that serve solely to reaffirm their pre-existing beliefs.
As more and more users become shielded from voices outside their ideological bubbles, we enter a world in which fact and fiction are out of joint. An age where discourse no longer centers around differences in opinion, but in perceptions of reality: the era of “post-truth.”
Caused by the decades-long decline in both perception of press legitimacy and trust in government, the post-truth era — as explained by Tony Rehagen of Boston College Magazine — is characterized by a rejection of information described by experts in favor of what they perceive as more authentic truths. The truth is now contested by his truth, her truth and their truth — each safeguarded by the echo chambers of social media.
“The reality is that we’re able to create many types of realities because of the communication tools we can now surround ourselves with,” said Michael Serazio, associate professor in Boston College’s communication department. “We produce information for social networks and tailor it to what we prefer. We live in a filtered bubble. It’s the notion of our ability to cocoon ourselves in news content that won’t cause cognizant dissonance.”
With expert opinions being left by the wayside, the new information landscape has become fertile ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation to flourish. One of the more concerning consequences in recent memory is the growth of the anti-vaxx community.
A 2024 Gallup poll found that only 40% of Americans deem vaccinating children to be “extremely important,” a decrease of 18% from 2019. This surge in skepticism can be explained by the growing salience of vaccine disinformation on platforms such as TikTok, where sensationalist anti-vaxx content is actively pushed by the algorithm and amasses millions of views. Once a user views one of these conspiratorial videos, the algorithm pushes more into their feed, making the misinformation harder to escape.
Online misinformation does not only harm public discourse — it costs lives. Measles outbreaks have been cropping up across the country, leading to the first deaths from the disease in a decade. Whooping cough cases have increased nationwide by 1,500% from 2021, resulting in the deaths of two Louisiana babies in the past six months and the first pertussis-related death in Washington in 10 years.
It is necessary to note that the algorithms pushing conspiratorial content and misinformation do not exist in a vacuum. Often, bias is embedded in their code. In a study conducted by the Queensland University of Technology, evidence was found that the platform X altered its algorithm to promote posts made by Elon Musk and conservative personalities to a greater degree than it had prior to July 13, 2024 — the day Elon Musk endorsed then-candidate Donald Trump.
Algorithms have also been shown to suppress certain political beliefs. Following Oct. 7, 2023, both Facebook and Instagram saw a sharp decline in engagement with Palestinian news outlets. An anonymous person leaked documents to the BBC proving that Instagram had deliberately altered its algorithm to muzzle pro-Palestinian content.
There is no easy fix to this new scourge against objectivity. One might recommend government regulation of misinformation, but the legal ramifications would create an entirely new dilemma. What would it look like to criminalize lying? Would it not constitute a violation of freedom of speech?
One of the best courses of action would be to require media literacy lessons as part of school curriculums. A population ignorant of the ways in which deceptive online content spreads cannot be expected to avoid it. Either that, or we allow society to further decay in its ability to distinguish fact from fantasy.
Nicholas Sherwood is an Opinion Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. He can be reached at nesherwo@uci.edu.
Edited by Jaheem Conley