Our brains are not well-equipped to down-rank bad information sufficiently once we are exposed to it. By then, it’s often too late. We do have powers of planning and selective exposure though, so we can say “I think these newspapers are authoritative and these others aren’t, so that’s what I’m going to subscribe to” much easier than “I’m going to selectively ignore this trash information that I see in google results or my Facebook wall.” Tools like this will allow reasonable people to curate the most authoritative sources on their side of the ideological spectrum. So even a right-leaning lens will tend to exclude the most extreme sources, and this will ease pressure on Fox such that it can present more center-right content without losing views. Same with the left-leaning lenses and MSNBC. If this idea proliferates (of selective exposure in a digital environment, where algorithms don’t entirely choose what you see), it can help deflate the network effects of extremism and populism in a virtuous cycle.
The cynic in me can’t help but wonder if this is just dialing up an echo chamber if we include social media proximity as a filter.