Break Out of Your Content Bubble - Harleen Kaur

[Music] Hey everyone, welcome back to the StinkGrow Podcast where personal development meets real life. I'm your host, Rubin Chavez. Today I'm speaking with Harleen Kor. Harleen is the founder of Ground News, which is a news platform that I've been using lately that helps combat media bias by allowing people to compare how different news outlets from across the political spectrum are covering the same story. This is after something that intersects quite nicely with the topic of values, which I talk a lot about here. Harleen is a former NASA engineer and she was also the first female and the youngest vice president of Rolls Royce, which hopefully will touch on in this conversation. She has an MBA in entrepreneurship from INSEAD, which is one of Europe's top business schools, and she also has a master's degree in space engineering. Harleen, welcome to the show. Thanks Rubin, I'm so excited to be speaking with you. Awesome, likewise, likewise. Can you just kind of give us a little bit of background like what's the through line from NASA to news? How do you start that course? Yeah, there were several stuff overs along the way, but long story short, I think like a typical engineer when you try to solve a problem for yourself, you end up sometimes making a product which you think a lot more people can use. So yeah, I've been fortunate enough to live and work in different countries and meet people from all over the world. And I myself, I'm a first generation immigrant from India to Canada. And media and news is something that I struggle with personally all throughout my career. And every single time, every single day I find myself opening like 30 tabs and trying to figure out what history really is. And I don't have a journalistic background and I don't have media training and I seriously don't have, didn't have that much time to figure out what's really going on in this world that has more and more polarized media and misinformation, disinformation, all these issues. So I wanted to create a product that again from an engineering standpoint, solves a problem that I think technology has created and with very much news being on the internet has created all these problems. So I wanted to create a technological solution that solves these problems by simply just presenting to you all these various different hours narrative around a new story and then let the reader decide, okay, let me figure out what really is happening, but in a short period of time and a more condensed version. Yeah, and I want to get into exactly kind of how you do that and the mechanisms by which you allow people to form their own opinions. But I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. So essentially, you're kind of fighting technology, the problems that technology created with more technology, which I think is reasonable. Yes, yes, no, I think you'll put it well. Yeah, I think a lot of us grew up in the household where people used to get one newspaper and you read that newspaper and you believed and your parents paid for that newspaper and you're like, okay, that's the information you're getting and believe in it. And then I think as you're describing it as news, especially hit internet, I think that's when things got really, really fuzzy. What do I believe? What do I not believe? And everything got amplified. Every single person can be a publishing platform. So how do I decide what's trustworthy and what's not? Especially with the advent of social media, you're like, okay, if something gets likes or shares, do I believe that story? What are the factors that make the story verified or not? So yeah, these are the kind of questions that I try to solve the grand news. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know. I think about sometimes if our ancestors, our distant ancestors would be surprised at the fact that we that actually you can have too much of a good thing. You can have too much information. I think EO Wilson, the scientist said, we're drowning in information while starving for wisdom. It's like you can have too much of a good thing and we're definitely dealing with with too much of a good thing right now. I have a couple different comments, but I guess one one thing is what begins to mind is that because we spend so much time in these isolated, what I think you call content bubbles isolated from opposing views, different groups are effectively developing separate moral systems in a sense through which to view the world. And we're kind of losing a shared moral language or moral system. And with that, we're also kind of losing the ability to understand the legitimate needs and values that drive the behavior and the beliefs of other people who might disagree with us. And so instead, we just kind of write them off as stupid and evil and misinformed and no doubt there's some of that, but it's not all of it. Anything that goes against our view isn't stupid or evil or misinformed, at least as far as I can tell. And so what I like about your app is that I think it addresses this problem by helping people to see how that same news story can be seen through different value lenses in a sense. Man, I think that repeated exposure increases empathy over the long term and also increases understanding of other views. Is that kind of another way to sum up the problem and how you're addressing it? Absolutely. I think Ruben used summed it up very, very nicely. So yeah, I think the biggest problem of quantum bubbles is it literally stops your access to other different viewpoints. I like your extrapolation that we are literally developing different moral codes at this point in time, depending on what we end up reading. That's really, really scary. But yeah, it's again, talking about news hitting internet and social media as we all know, I think it there's increased awareness that filter bubbles are formed because companies like serving you with information, be it news or stories or whatever it is, content that you like and you like to read or like to view. So you end up spending more time on platform because again, the monetization strategy is that you get ads, you click on them or view an ad for some period of time. So how do I keep you on a platform longer? So I make more money is simply because I show I figure out what exactly where where your ideology is and I just keep serving your content that you agree with. It's much easier for me as a platform. But yeah, that's exactly what we wanted to break with ground news. And as you said, like these bubbles that we live in and it's funny when we collide in real world. So for a lot of people, for example, the 2016 US election was one of those colliding with the real real world. Where did they realize that oh my god, the election results is not what I thought it could be even compressible. So how do we inform ourselves, how other people are thinking? That's just one example, by the way, not my personal views, but just something that we hear from the users all the time. So yeah, what what we can do as individuals is inform ourselves of different opinions. And the only way I can do is by being exposed to we appoint a might not agree with it. But I understand that they're out there and what we do at ground users will take us single piece of story as you describe and show you all the different diverse narratives. Again, it's up to you. You agree or might not agree, but you should know that there are people out there who might be leading only this certain set of narratives that you might not agree with. And then at least you know where they're coming from, what are they reading and you can have an informed dialogue with them. Yeah, I love it. Like I said, I've been using the platform and in my personal life. And even before we connected, we were talking about this before we came on, I've been using ground news and it's it's very very useful to see how different news stories are framed by different news outlets based on their political leanings. And it's just fascinating. And I think that it's really helped my, let's help a lot of things, but it's helped me kind of get a much more comprehensive grasp on individual news stories because when you read, when you take a new story and then you read the, like you read from the left to the center to the right and you read all the headlines and maybe a little bit of the article, then you can step back, at least for me, here's what I do. I read them all and then I step back and I'm like, okay, what's kind of the thing that's common among all of these? You know, what's you get a sense? It's kind of like in statistics, you know, you you have you know, a set of data and then what's common among all of that is kind of that's what's true, you know, and so I really like that aspect a bit. Can you just kind of walk us through exactly how it works? Because I think it's useful for people to know what makes this app, this news app different from other news apps? Yeah, one of the main differences is, again, as you said, it's not one new story, one article. So a lot, a lot of news platforms out there, you'll read an article and it's single. So or so you can read all of it, but then you only get to a single perspective. So it's again addressing an issue one, there is inherent bias in us as human beings and inherent biases media sources. So I think media companies have realized that to be able to survive, they cannot speak to everybody, they're going to take a set of the audience and they're going to speak to them well and kind of keep reinforcing their points and confirmation bias. Yes, exactly confirmation bias and that basically proliferates confirmation bias all over the place. Absolutely. And I find even TV a more exaggerated version than print in that respect. So if you just switch channels, it's very, very interesting. The kind of a sometimes the same news is not even being covered. It's like nothing is common between the two. They're not even covering that app. And second, like if they are covering the same news, they'll take like such different diverse aspects of it. So let me give you an example. For example, Black Lives Matter protests last year. So of course, There was a big issue throughout the US, a big new story, recurring across different cities. So if you looked at the left, they were talking about how important issue it is and how this is very, very important that it's happening and the struggle of African-American. But if you look to the right, it's talking about all the disruption it's causing and all the property damage and its chaos and its disregard for rules and regulations. Again, neither of them is untrue, but of them is true. But both of them have just picked, again, this agenda, and they're going to keep repeating the same thing or not work again. So again, the basis of the news is true, as you think, statistical basis that these protests are happening has simplest that. But what part they're focusing is on very, very different. So yeah, going back to your question, how we do that is one thing that's that works about us is that we take a lot of different new sources. We have 50,000 new sources that counting. And we have become the world's biggest news aggregator kind of by coincidence in that perspective. We didn't even set out to do that. But when you want to show as many different narratives as possible, then you need to show, for example, different interrupts of bias spectrum, but also location. So if you are, say, you're covering something like Hong Kong protests, you want to show what people in Hong Kong are thinking, so what the local press is saying. There's Hong Kong free press and South China Monaco is the new C, what China is saying about it. You can see how it's covered around the world, say, Russia is saying about it, Canada is saying about it. So we end up collating all these different narratives that came to expose bias and geopolitical agenda. And how it works technologically is that, as soon as a news breaks, our system boasts and looks for every single news source that's talking about this news story. And then we'll collate the most diverse perspectives. So there is no point for us to keep showing the same and say, a new source is taking the news coverage from writers or AP. And then it doesn't matter that I keep showing you, again, the same story that has been republished. Our objective is to show you how diversified it can be, how exaggerated it can be, how it's clearly cut, so we'll go and the system goes and looks out for, again, the WERBH, that's the most different, the facts that has been more differently presented, how do we do that? And just simply then present to you those different narratives and with a single swipe, you can just be and compare for yourself. - Yeah, it takes no effort. It's just all right there as opposed to back in the day when you had 30 tabs open on your computer. It's all right there immediately. It's so cool. - Yes, I'm figuring out what new sources, again, going to a home called example, or especially international example, I don't know what, for example, in an Iranian news sources, and what is a trusted Iranian news source. So Brown News does that research for you and says, hey, this is a news source, which is I don't know, a mouthpiece of the government, this is a news source, that's the free people's news source from that, this is the opposition news source. So we just present those to you in a very reliable format, and then you can decide, okay, I understand, where this news source is coming from. If you've never come across. - And who decides that? Like who decides what news source is reputable and also even what their political leanings are? - Very good question. So yeah, we don't do that. We take quite a few sources. Again, intently, we try to remain as neutral as possible and say, hey, we are not journalists, all we're trying to do is collate information. So we take quite a few signals of information for that kind of determination. One is there are different rating agencies out there who do this for a living. There are third parties, double them on nonprofit, and they're reputable. So similar to, I don't know, say, S&P 500 or whatever, is how the rating happens. So we take these and we take the statistical average again to remain neutral. Then we also use our own ratings a bit. This is based on very much how information is presenting and the language that has been used. So if a news source keeps inserting, say, inflammatory adjectives and language that is more emotionally walking, then we will add that factor to it. And in terms of what news source features on ground versus not again, we add a bit of a bread up filter for new sources. We are not going to let everything through. How do we do that is again, the system decides how long has a new source exist? Do they have a social media presence? Where is the headquarters? Do they have a Wikipedia page? Have they been verified on any of the social media? Has their news been processed? So there are a lot of that happening automatically as soon as we come across a very new news source. Until we do all those checks and balances, kind of fit in the purgatory till we introduce that in the system. So that we can feel confident that, yes, it might be the way it's presenting news is very different than the others. But at least it's presenting some element of truth in that news. So part of it is third party verification. And part of it is AI. Those are the two vetting things. That is correct. Yeah, I use the word AI very sparrically. Because I think there is now a mass, I take the technology itself as a result of the bad news for itself. So it all depends on how you use it. So yeah, the natural language processing, the NLP part of AI is what we use to be able to determine. Say that again. NLP, which is natural language processing part of AI, is what we use. So very much the web age, very much, again, the how the sentence is formed, is it as very factual like presswire service like Reuters or AP, or is it more flowery like bright artists? And they'll just inject these different. And again, the bright bars, the right source left as the same is just understanding how they're describing a new story. And so yes, it's just statistical average of rating agencies and then our own analysis of the coverage. That makes sense. Well, yeah, AI has gotten a better app. But it's like it's a tool just like anything else. Like you're using the technology to fight technology, to fight the bad consequences that technology has kind of manifested, you're using the same tool to fight it. So a tool is neutral in my view. And then you could just use it for good or for bad. But the other thing I was going to ask you about was the fact checking. And I noticed you don't fact check on there, which I like actually. It's a tricky thing. It's a tricky subject philosophically. But I'd like for you to talk about why you don't fact check on this platform. Yeah. Yeah, good question. Again, it was one of the decisions we had to make very early on to take the approach where we're giving a green check box or red cross to something. And we decided not to do that because I think as soon as you do that, you're going to alienate certain people. Say they didn't agree with that particular fact checking that we did. And they're all going to ask, OK, why is ground museum authority? And why would they be? They'd be in a position to be able to fact check or not. And nobody wants to be cruel with wrong. So the psychology behind it is what we think is more powerful. I'm not going to say this is right or wrong. I'm leaving it very much up to you to be able to decide what's right or wrong. All I'm going to present to you is these are the different narratives. And as you are saying, that you go across and then very much think for yourself. All I'm asking you to do is add that critical thinking. Because I feel like when we start adding that critical thinking, we are going to alienate a certain set of readers left our right or wherever they stand at the bias spectrum. And we don't want that to happen. We want this to be very, very inclusive in terms of the thoughts that they bring and the ideologies that they bring to platform. Everybody is very much welcomed. But the difference is we serve everybody exactly the same information. So it's very much up to you what you decide to conclude from that set of information. So it's like you present the information, and it's up to us to use our critical thinking skills to process that. Exactly. That's the most difficult part. You're right. Right. It's a big task. It is indeed. It's not likely. But yeah, we just think that that's not for us to be able to decide. And we do get a lot of feedback every single day where people say, yes, my heart and mind has changed since I started using ground news. Because I would not say go to a certain set of news sources ever. But because they're readily available right next to it, and I'm getting exposed to this more. I'm thinking about certain issues differently than I ever thought before. Again, not saying, I think going out and not writing out right basically, hey, you are wrong. I think if we did that, then we won't be able to do that again. Comes to the mission, what we're trying to achieve, and what we're trying to achieve is this positive coexistence between people regardless of where you're coming from, what you're thinking. I'm just presenting to you the news so that your new source is included. And plus, you're using a challenge at the same time. Yeah. And it seems even from a strategic standpoint that one will want to understand the views of their opponent. Even if you don't agree with your opponent, exactly. Strategically, you want to understand what they're thinking and what the views are. And that just has seemed obvious to me ever since it started thinking about this stuff. And so it's like exposing yourself to things that you don't agree with is especially important, especially if you don't agree with them because of the fact that you want to know what your enemy's thinking or your opponent's thinking so that you can combat that. So that you can combat that with robust discourse or with evidence or whatever it is. That's how we get to the truth. Exactly. That's why I'm not by silooming ourselves. Yes, not by digging your head and the sand and saying, oh, yeah, I don't even know if it exists or not. And the interesting part of it is that it's not even the opponent's anymore, right? It's your family members, it's your uncles, it's spouses, it's your neighbors. So what people are doing is they're following the former approaches, then they stop talking to part of their families or-- neighbors or whoever. More isolation. Yeah, more isolation. And then you're never going to figure out so how do you equip yourself to be able to have the conversation rather than just saying as you said, you are stupid or you're evil because it's not true. Yeah, yeah. Right. 50% of America can't be stupid or evil. Statistically, it seems unlikely. So maybe there's some bridge. I'm going to use that one. All right. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to ask you about was like, you also, you use a phrase in one of your interviews that I was reading that was really nice with that we have kind of a lack of shared reality. Is this kind of the same thing as a content bubble? This is kind of the the result of living in our content bubbles is a lack of shared reality. Exactly. So I think again, that confirmation bias keep getting content that we agree with and not even looking at the other is yeah, you as you said, you start forming a different sense of morality is different sense of reality to that point what's really, really going on and you just said on that. And one thing I want to talk about driven is it's not just how differently and news get covered. It's where the sense of reality comes into place when a news doesn't get covered. So this is something we told he stumbled upon around news. We didn't expect that. So every single news story we see who is covering and who's not and I think the bigger bias we are exposing is when the story doesn't get covered at all by left or right or certain set of news sources. So if you were reading those news sources that then cover certain stories, then your sense of reality is going to be very very different because you are going to be like, okay, that's never even happened because my news sources never even reported that to me. Right. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to ask you about that. There's like there's the obvious bias of news story coverage, which is colored by your political leanings, but then there is the bias of one news source not covering a story and the other covering the story that's implicit in the coverage of the news story before they even slant it. But then there's another bias, which is when both don't cover it's like there are an infinite amount of events in the world happening at any one time. The choice to cover some and not others is actually a bias of sorts. You know, and this is getting more philosophical, but it's like, you know, what are you going to focus on? Basically, there are likely more good things happening than bad things. You just comes back to the idea of news being a source of drama and a money maker because of that. And so it's like, what are you going to cover? So you deal with that nicely though when it comes to one source covering a story and one source not covering, you show the source that doesn't cover it. But what about when neither source covers it? How do you do that? Yeah, that is an interesting point. So yeah, as we said, the first piece we are dealing with is what we call blind spots and it become kind of a calling card for grab news that we have a separate section to show you these skewed cover stories. So something that we haven't actually released to the readers yet, I'll share kind of a sneak preview with you is we started mapping what are the topics that get covered the most often by a new source. So we're almost kind of reverse in generating the talking point of that media company. So let's say this is CNN, this is Fox, and these are the topics they talk about all the time. And these are the topics they never talk about. So that is something we think we're going to be very, very powerful that we display to the users and say, hey, look, this is this statistically based on say the news that we've covered in last three years. That's the data we as grab news have that they never talked about this topic and they always talked about this topic. So you could decide for yourself that there's an implicit bias or say Fox also just picking on the two they never covered that. And then here there's another bias that we are actually working on a very nifty tool. There's a corporate bias. So why does certain news sources talk about certain topics and certain don't. So if they see an end, Carly talks about net neutrality, a very obvious example, why? Because they're owned by AT&T. So although they are very liberal, they don't talk about that. So it's again, just understanding why they would not talk about certain things or not. When Comcast was owned by GE, they used to have a disclaimer, hey, they're not going to talk about something. But I think now disclaimers are disappearing and it's kind of left to us. So if you were only watching CNN all the time, you would never hear much about net neutrality because it's not again, just an obvious example. So we are actually also mapping who owns which media company and it's surprising sometimes how many conglomerates end up owning the same company. So although you're thinking you're getting diverse diets. So let's pick on newscars. So say you listen to Fox, you read Wall Street Journal because it's very well-preformed newspapers. Say you read New York Post for a bit more sensationalism, you go to barons for investing. And then you don't realize all of them are owned by one company called Newscars. So it's not really a that word set of diets. It is just one single conglomerate owning all that. So they're talking talking points are very much penalty limited to that. So again, it's all goes back to the philosophy. Like of course, I'm going to advocate for reading brand news. But even if you don't read down news, just try to get as balanced a news site as possible. I think gone are those days where you could depend on a single media source and say I get every information that I need. And possibly a single resource cannot cover everything. As you said, there's so many events happening in the world. So you have to read a whole that word set of it to be really, really understanding what's really going on in the world. Yeah, I think I want to drive home the fact that like this episode is maybe slightly different from the episodes that I normally do on my podcast in the sense that we're talking about news. But the reason we're talking about it is because it's a source of information that the intersects with our values. And also, I think that the underlying problem is confirmation bias and succumbing to confirmation bias in a way that limits your worldview. This can happen in many different domains, but the news is a huge source of that. And so it's a huge source of information that can color our worldview. And so I think that's the rock bottom problem, right? It's a coming to confirmation bias in a way that limits your worldview. Because it's so comfortable for us to do that, right? It's so comfortable for us to view. Yeah, I've had the pleasure to talk to Jonathan Hyde. Oh, I love Jonathan Hyde. Yeah. And I was talking to him and the whole "Podling of the American Mind" and of course he's written all that. And I think we live in a society where, again, confirmation bias is very much "Podling of the Mind" because you think you won't be able to be challenged with views that don't agree with you. And he uses this term called "Some Systems Are Anti-Fragile." That means that then need to be challenged to be stronger, like banks need to do stress testing to be stronger. All kids need to have certain, I don't know, experiences to be stronger. Just like that, I think normal news leaders need to are anti-fragile. They need to be challenged. And the reality of it is you're going to be challenged in the real world. So why not do it in the comfort of your own phone or computer and be challenged there rather than being running into people or being running into reality that you had no clue that was happening. So again, I think it makes us intellectually more balanced and more stronger to be able to be confronted with those views that you don't agree with. And confirmation bias is something we should absolutely all challenge. And obviously confirmation bias is not something new. That's something that's a structural issue in the human brain. But are content bubbles something, like are those a new phenomenon or is that something societies have always had to deal with? I heard you say one time that an interview of filter bubbles today or content bubbles today are what parental opinions were 10 years ago. Can you talk about what's your thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah. So I say that for the bubbles online today are like parental political opinions and childhood. In the fact that they are absolutely integral in shaping someone's worldview and once forms they are hard to burst. So in that sense they're very very similar. And filter bubbles intensify polarization and appear our ability to have constructive conversation about the issues that are really really important. And again, the greatest thing we were talking about is earlier greatest sense. So no filter bubbles is that they impede our access to content that might challenge our worldview and only kind of serve to reinforce strongly held convictions. So when people don't have access to information that they disagree with, they struggle to understand the perspective of others and this literally drives the risk between them and can isolate as we were talking about can isolate people. Yeah, filter bubbles are dangerous things. I'm not an anthropologist but I believe I think they've existed always but again internet has just intensified that so much. I was watching this documentary on Netflix. I have to admit and this I think his name Spencer forget the last name he's an ultroid activist. Richard Spencer probably. That's correct. Yeah, that's correct. Richard Spencer and he was talking about how his views were formed but he said now the generation is literally the crack is being injected directing to their eyeballs with YouTube and all of that which was like coming from a guy like this. That's where he's strong opinions. It takes that now the generation is being subjected to something way more stronger but he has to be. So yeah, scary stuff that will be live in today. Yeah, it seems like the path to extremism is living in a filter bubble in some sense. Yes, and I think again going back to simple as revenue models, which is so scary that just to make money, it's easier for the platforms to do that and it's easier for the influencers to do that. And it's easier for publishers to do that. Like no matter where you are, it's much easier to make money by picking a subset of people that you can really, really appeal to and give out your content to. And so I've heard, for example, YouTube engineers talking about it's not that I'm not going to give you the content that you care about the most, but what I'm going to do is find a rabbit hole where you fit perfectly and that I'm going to push you down that rabbit hole because it's so much easier for me to just keep you in that rabbit hole and just again, time on screen. At Brown News, one of the principles that I want to absolutely abide by is comprehension versus consumption. So we never, we don't want add based revenue because that's purely based on consumption of content. We are making money by comprehension. Do you understand what's going on or not? And that's the only reason that's the only principle and that's why we exist. Not necessarily keeping in the platform as long as possible. Wow, that is novel. So you're not making money on time spent in the platform, but from how much do you understand what's going on? Explain to me how you make money through that. Yeah, so we have gone back to very old school here. We have asked people to pay for subscription. Of course, there's a free version of the platform which you can keep using because it's our mission to be able to give this access to everybody, but as a for-profit company and to be successful and spread the product, we need to make money to pay our salaries and keep doing this work. So we charge a small subscription fee as low as less than a dollar a month if you want to pay for it and as high as a three dollars a month. So it's not equivalent to the fee with that you get access to all the different analysis that we provide, all the new sources that we provide, and again, that's the only way we make money. So we will never show you a single ad. The ads that you see on ground news is those serve by news publishers, not by us. So if the news publishers are choosing to monetize, it's the money and everything that's their revenue. We don't make any money off that. That's beautiful. I love that. I love that. It's more of a direct consumer model. Absolutely. If the product is successful, people would, and it's the serving of purpose, then I strongly believe people would pay for it, at least as little as a dollar. But the difficulty now is people have gotten so used to getting their news for free on social media. That's kind of this vicious cycle that we are talking about. So going back to a model where you can pay very little for news, but be absolutely sure of what you're getting is what you can rely on. What we are trying to get back to is a good old days. I would call them. Before social media had institutionalized confirmation bias, so to speak. Like that phrase. I mean, yes. Yeah, I was thinking about that. It's like that's kind of what with the algorithms, with the advent of algorithms, that's what has happened. We've institutionalized confirmation bias. So that's wild. But I guess for some practicals, we've talked a lot about the problem. And you kind of alluded to some of the solutions here. Obviously ground news is a solution to this problem of living in content bubbles and so coming into confirmation bias. What are some other ways of defending yourself against confirmation bias and of living in a limited reality, a limited value structure? What are some ways to combat this? Yeah, again, I think diversifying the diet of news here, consuming and diversifying the diet of content you're consuming. It's not really just breaking news, right? And the more diverse it is, again, it's like a nutritional approach that if you're just going to keep eating a certain set of vegetables or meat, you're not going to get all the nutrition that you need for the healthy mind. Great analogy. Yes. And you're going to get bored if you need broccoli, so you're going to need some snacks here and there. But make sure you just take that nutritional approach and just have that violent diet, no matter how you do it again. Even if you're doing it on social media. Rebooks that you don't agree with. Exactly. And it's very, very hard to do that, but do it. Or even again, talk to people that you don't agree it. It's a very uncomfortable thing for us to do, especially in real life in the world where hashtag activism exists and everything is done online. Try to talk to people that you don't necessarily agree with. And I think in person, it's much more an experience where people can't be inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory. And you can have that dialogue. And yeah, even in social media, if you are consuming news or content or social media, make sure you follow that word set of people and accounts that can provide you that opposing information. And be careful before you share, of course, before you consume that is your own responsibility, but before you share. Absolutely. Where is it coming from? So the kind of checks and balances we automatically do try to do it yourself. What is the social media account? How long has this existed? So in a world where literally publications are formed for publishing the articles of the day off, you want to know where have they come from or they're from, I don't know, Macedonia or something where they're literally farms. So just blogs being written and spewing hate. So yeah, try and do all those checks and balances. It takes longer, but yes, but also then that will give you that environment of being more confident of what kind of information you're feeding yourself. I love that. Those are great recommendations. It seems that there are two different sets of people that might use your product or that are potential customers for your product. One is a set of people who know they need your product. And because they're conscious of the things we're talking about here. And so they don't actually need your product. Actually, they use your product, but they don't need it in a sense. And then there's another set of people who feel that they have such a grasp on ultimate reality or the truth that they don't actually need a diversity of opinions. And they're the ones who need it most. So the people who don't use it are the ones who need it the most. I totally agree with you. What do you do with that, man? That's a hard one. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. But we are getting, we started with of course, the first kind of people. And there's still a lot of people out there. I would love to for them to know that the product like this exists. People who actually have 10 news apps on their home and do that comparison themselves and just telling them, okay, something like this exists. And it will save you time. But yes, they're in the right mindset. So as I said, they quote, quote, unquote, don't need it. But of course, it helps with the productivity and the of course, the diversity of news sources that we're providing. The second set of people, we are getting them on the platform already. They come in thinking that they are going to confirm, again, have that confirmation bias and because they see their favorite news source. And they feel like, okay, grab this not a place where we are excluding news sources. We do get sometimes, hey, why do you have, I don't know, bright spot on there? Why do we have mother Jones on there or vice versa? But the reason we have on there is because people are reading that out there. So we say, yes, we do have, I don't know, let's pick on bright bar. We do have bright bar on there because to show that that we're still doing a part in how people are thinking. But then if a bright bar user comes on to run use, they are going to get exposed to the likes of CNN or mother Jones or Hill or whatever it is that they would never be reading otherwise. And just because it's easy for them to be able to consume it, it's right there. Then they end up consuming it. If anything, we have got more love from the conservative press, which is very, very interesting to see because I think there are a lot of conservative readers out there who feel that their thought is being ignored or their news sources are not being included. So again, having that inclusive environment in terms of thought diversity is why if people come to ground use those well and say, there is, we have all the news sources that you would be reading outside. You would find them here plus a lot others. So once you're ready mentally, just swipe across and try and see what others are saying. Yeah, just do a one swipe at first. Take it easy on yourself and then you might see, oh, it's scary. It's scary, but you can work up to. It causes a physiological reaction literally sometimes. Yeah, it does. Yeah, if you're not used to that. It's tough. So I see that in myself sometimes, oh, I do all day, is this pretty new, but again, going to the mental toughness and intellectual toughness that you have to do that. Yeah. Speaking of reading news, maybe this is the wrong question to ask you, but are there best practices for consuming news in a way that's healthy? I think there's a way to consume news in which we become overwhelmed and nervous and we just become consumed by it. Yeah. Is there a way to consume news as healthier? Do you have any best practices for this? Batching your news intake or anything like that? We want to be informed, but we don't want to like be consumed. Good question. I think yeah, the, the, what you're talking about is it's been called doom scrolling. Yes. So in ground use, we actually have a good kind of philosophy that we use. We have two sets of feeds. What is called top stories? It's very, very limited. It's only 10 stories of news a day or whatever, which is the very important things that are happening around the world regardless if you care about them or not. So think of it as a front page of newspaper. So regardless, you read it or I read it, it's going to be the same. So these are the stories. It includes hopefully positive stories like Olympics or Paralympic, Slovak, Germany or whatever that's happening around the world. But also say something happens in Sierra Leone. You don't necessarily care about Sierra Leone, but we are going to show that to you. And then we have something on my feed which is more your interest-based feed. So say I don't know, you care about crypto or tech or gadgets or fashion. That is more of your feed. where you find lighter interest. So we see people doing that on Grammuz, then in the morning they would read that top stories, the 10 main stories or something. So they are in calm for the day, they'll go into the kind of work world or facing the world. So they know at least what's going on. But then we use see people coming back later in the day or something and consuming more interest-based feeds, which is more informing yourself and kind of widening your horizons in terms of topics that you care about. So I find that that seems to work. We do inject things like more upbeat news or good news, because as you say, it does get very overwhelming the content. My favorite section is called Offbeat, which is news that's real. It's not really quick, but it's kind of a fresh breather of air. I don't know, yesterday was news about this Ducks in Australia that I've learned to swear. So I'm totally running me. Sometimes with everything that's tough going on in the world, it's just nice to kind of have that breather. So-- That's a good topic to follow. Yeah. I like to even follow certain topics. And the Offbeat topic is a really good topic to follow to infuse your feed with a little bit more levity. Exactly. Just to have that. Yeah, I think in mental health, why is we have to all create that balance to be able to kind of deal with the world and have the mental balance to deal with the important issues and not get overwhelmed. Yeah, you have to deal with our families and our regular life. I guess finally, I wanted to ask you, I know this is a biased sample for sure, but how much news do you consume on a daily basis? A lot too much, not too much, but yeah, it's my job to be able to keep on top of news and read about it. I think the kind of news I end up reading is as I said, top stories what's happening around the world and a little bit of readers and the other news that we get regularly. And I think I'm not the only one with local news. Yeah. So the things like that matter to me, if there's whether or not there's a road closure or what's happening in our community, I think that something again, being human beings, things that are going to affect me directly is something that of course I read. And that is one feedback we get regularly from our readers. That yes, I want to be able to read good local news. And I think that means that's a good job of being able to provide you that neighborhood city level news. Yeah, that has really changed both my wife's and my immediate consumption. Our news consumption is reading local news a lot because it's much less inflammatory and it's more relevant to your immediate life. Exactly. It's kind of news you can use, right? Exactly. What's happening? And yeah, if anything, I feel more connected to the local community and everything that's going on. So I think again, going back to your question about how do you keep saying everything that's happening just complete local news as well, because that's not going to be sensationalized. Yep. Harleen, this has been such a fun conversation. And is there anything you'd like to anything else you'd like to end with? Or would you like to tell people where they can find you, anything like that? Yeah, sounds good. Everybody can find us on ground.News. That's our website. And we have iPhone and Android apps where you could consume it. We have a browser extension that you can use. We have newsletter. So regardless of how you consume your news, you want to meet you there. So we would love for you to give it a try. And of course, please let me know what you think of the product and because it's a product that we are trying to improve all the time. So we'd love to hear especially your listeners who are very special and willing mindset people. What do they think of the product and how we can improve it? Awesome. Well, like I said, I've loved it. It's helped me think about things in different ways and helped me stretch my mental muscles, so to speak. And my moral muscles, quite frankly. So thank you for your work. And I appreciate you coming on the show and talking with me. Well, thank you, Robin. I appreciate my pleasure. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, thanks for listening. You can find the show notes for this episode and all other episodes on my website at thinkgroprosper.com/podcast. That's where I put all the links and resources mentioned in each episode. It's also where I put the outlines of topics covered, which is a really good way to refer back to episodes in the future. Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a review on iTunes with your biggest takeaway. I make it a point to read all the reviews. You can also screenshot this episode and share it to your social media, along with something you learned or found interesting. And tag me in your post because I'd love to see what you found interesting. Say hi and thank you for your support. [MUSIC PLAYING]