Social Bubbles, Fake News, and Profits: Can Real News Survive?

Abstract

We develop a game-theoretic model of strategic interaction between news providers and news consumers. News providers are profit maximizers while consumers maximize utility. News providers can provide true or fake news. Providing real news is costlier than providing fake news. Consumers can be biased, i.e., live in a social bubble, or unbiased. Real News that does not fit their world view is costly for biased consumers, while fake news imposes a negative externality on unbiased consumers because they have to spend time fact-checking. Heterogeneity in costs for both news purveyors and consumers drives Nash equilibria in static and dynamic game formulations. We conclude that market based rational choice systems can help understand the spread of fake news and biased people. Consequently, it is not enough to say that greedy profit-maximizing media companies drive fake news. Consumers drive the choices made by media companies, while media companies drive the consumer choice to be biased. Fetters on a free press may exacerbate the increase of biased consumers. Last, there may be a trade-off between two equally important democratic goals: the right information to make good decisions and freedom of thought.