On Alternative Media
Overconfidence and confirmation bias are a nasty combo
Over the last 10–15 years, the media landscape has decentralized, shifting from traditional sources to what’s now called "alternative media." The internet has given anyone the ability to publish their opinions and build a large following across various online mediums. Before this shift, people had to rely on a relatively fixed set of media outlets—newspapers, magazines, or radio channels—for news and analysis.
On balance, I think the rise of alternative media is a good thing. More consumer choice is generally better, especially when it comes to information. But this is obviously not a hot take. In fact, it might be the coldest take I could have. If there's one thing that's true about alternative media, people who consume it LOVE talking about how great it is. What you hear much less often, and what I want to discuss in this essay, are its problems. There are some unique dynamics that arise from the consumption of alternative media that are non-existent with traditional sources.
But before we dive into that, let’s take a step back and look at how we got here.
The Rise and Fall of Traditional Media
(A quick note on definitions. When I talk about traditional media, I am referring to a conglomeration of different things, including news shows like FOX, MSNBC, and CNN, and newspapers like the NYT, WSJ, and WaPo. When I talk about alternative media, I am talking about the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people who post about news and analysis on YouTube, Podcasts, Substack, Twitter, TikTok, etc.)
Traditional media enjoyed a very cushy existence for the first 50 year. The barriers to entry were high, so only a few networks, national newspapers and magazines existed. Interestingly, this lack of choice wasn't seen as an issue. Societal trust was at an all-time high, and for whatever reason traditional media outlets were quite unbiased and homogenous, none venturing far beyond the center of the Overton window. Competition between outlets occurred primarily around getting the best scoop, such as WaPo breaking Watergate.
This dynamic began to change in the 1990s when Roger Ailes introduced a competitive concept to get more viewers: don't be unbiased, instead give people want they want. It was a revolutionary idea that turned Fox News into the media empire it is today. Seeing the meteoric rise of Fox News, the other media outlets soon followed suit. This was traditional medias first introduction to the idea that, to quote Ailes, "people don't want to be informed, they want to feel informed." This trend was exacerbated by the internet, where for the first time the traditional media outlets had some serious outside competition. They leaned harder into the biases of their viewers since this allowed them to partially stem the hemorrhaging of viewers, which gets us to where we are today, where each traditional outlet largely gives you one biased point of view.
(It's important to note though that "biased" does not mean "makes stuff up", as I talk about in here, it instead means to report on a selective subset of the overall context of a situation.)
The rise of alternative media began in the 90s with the advent of the internet but has gotten hugely popular in the last 10 years through Substack, Twitter, Podcasts, and YouTube. The creed of alternative media is nearly identical to the founding hopes for the internet: democratizing speech means anyone anywhere can publish, the dynamics of competition and debate will allow only the best, truest opinions to the top, which will usher in a utopian era of enlightened discourse. We have choice now! We can follow the best people in the world and get news and analysis from whoever and are no longer shackled to a small number of traditional outlets!
This is a little tongue in cheek, but I don't think it's off base to say that anyone who engages with alternative media is very bullish on alternative media. This leads to my primary concern around alternative media, which is the overconfidence of those who engage with it.
Overconfidence
Most people who engage with traditional media 1) know it's biased but 2) watch it anyway. Let’s start with the first point. Because there are so few major outlets, their biases are constantly scrutinized. No one watching Fox News has gone their whole life without hearing that Fox News is biased. And where does that criticism often come from? Other traditional media outlets. When a network publishes something false, who calls them out? Their peers. This awareness seeps in, even if viewers don’t actively seek it. It forces a quiet acknowledgment—however small—that their preferred outlet has an angle. And of course, this isn’t a revelation. If someone claimed MSNBC or Fox News was unbiased, they’d sound delusional. We don’t just know these outlets are biased—we know that everyone else knows it too.
Which gets us to #2: if people know it's biased, why keep watching? Given a choice between unbiased Option A and biased Option B, most would claim they’d pick A. If you care about updating your world view based true information, you should prefer the least biased source. Additionally, you’d want others to see you choosing it because admitting a preference for biased media doesn’t exactly scream intellectual credibility. So, again, why would people continue to watch traditional media when they know it's biased? Because they have an out. And it would sound something like: "sure, it’s biased, but there aren't many alternatives, and everything else is biased too." Whether or not that argument holds up, it provides just enough justification to keep tuning in.
This gets us to the main point of this section. It's a bit circular, but one of the benefits of traditional media is that people know it's biased. Having a high bar of skepticism when you engage with new information is good and means you’re more likely to approach new information with a grain of salt, albeit probably a small one.
Alternative media on the other hand does not have this dynamic. Everyone who is engaged with alternative media is highly confident that the slew of Substack newsletters and podcasts that they follow are unbiased. Why such confidence? Well, for the inverse of the two reasons we just talked about. First, they don't have anyone telling them their publication is biased. Instead of reading a traditional media outlet that gets called biased all the time, they are instead reading an obscure Substack with a name like "Napoleon's Bulldog". Not only is no one telling them “Napoleon’s Bulldog” is probably biased, no one has even heard of it. There are just too many alternative media outlets to make it likely that you will hear any external checks on your preferred tweeter/podcaster/blogger.
But perhaps the biggest reason for the overconfidence we see in alternative media is that the burden of consuming biased media is now on the consumer. No longer can we use the excuse of "well they're all biased and there's no other options". There are a TON of other options, many of which are high quality. If you are frequently consuming a highly biased alternative media source by your own volition, you would be a dummy. But you're not a dummy. And since you’re not a dummy, your alternative media source must be unbiased. Are you starting to see the problem? Since there is no longer an excuse to justify watching biased media, people will subconsciously trick themselves into believing they are watching unbiased media as a self-esteem preservation technique.
Let’s call this the Alternative Media Overconfidence Principle: regardless of an alternative source’s quality relative to a traditional outlet, people will exhibit strong confidence that it is highly superior.
Confirmation bias just keeps ruining everything
If done right, alternative media can provide far better information than traditional sources. The problem? Doing it right is hard. That’s what I want to explore here.
Traditional media operates within a narrow band—ranging from bad to decent—while alternative media swings wildly between pure nonsense and genuinely brilliant unbiased insight. Some may say this isn’t an issue. That the dynamics of competition will make sure the best stuff rises to the top. To which I’d ask: Are you sure about that? Confirmation bias hasn’t disappeared. It’s human nature to seek out information that reinforces what we already believe. In fact, this was one of the main criticisms of traditional media—they exploit our biases to keep us engaged. So why wouldn’t alternative media fall into the same trap?
Individual content creators operate under the same incentive structure as traditional media: maximize followers. Many have left their old jobs and aren’t eager to return to a 9-to-5. Do you really think most will opt for the less popular but more balanced take? Or will they lean into what their audience wants, in turn getting them more subscribers?
Consider which headlines would get more clicks:"Here's why all Trump voters are deranged fascists" or "An unbiased analysis of Trump's first term"? Or, "Liberals want to turn America into a Communist hellscape" vs. "Weighing the pros and cons of socialized medicine"? The creators pushing the latter two won’t build audiences anywhere near the size of those pushing the former. The market of ideas rewards outraged bias, not nuance.
I understand that "confirmation bias is really bad" isn't exactly an original take. My point is that just because we have gotten away from traditional media doesn't mean we’ve gotten rid of confirmation bias, which has been the culprit all along.
Conclusion
I have a quote in my notes and I can't find the source, but after the invention of the printing press a bishop apparently said, "printing will make reading the infatuation of those who have no business reading." I am not blind to the fact that my critiques can be taken as a modern version of this quote. However, my point is not that the average person cannot be trusted to decide their information sources. My goal is to raise a concern, such that it can be made aware of and hopefully improved.
We are entering a world where there are tens of thousands of different information sources to choose from, and it is up to every individual to properly vet and curate their own sources. As I said, this is a good thing, but we must be prepared that this may lead to a dynamic where the average person consumes worse information sources with increased confidence. This isn't a great mixture for flourishing societal discourse.
While this is concerning, it's not a reason to go back to traditional media. We should continue to ensure we are continuing to critique our new alternative media landscape with the goal of improving it. Luckily, we don't have to ask for permission this time.