Imagine if every newspaper came with a mandatory T-shirt. Suddenly, that tabloid you paged through out of curiosity becomes part of your identity. You have to explain to friends that despite being a walking billboard, you don’t actually agree with The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorials, or think The New York Times is too liberal but still covers the facts. Increasingly, you stick to outlets you unambiguously approve of, reinforcing things you already believe.

This is how Facebook imagines the future of news, and it’s absurd.

Since president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign exposed deep rifts in the American electorate, people have criticized various aspects of the Facebook “filter bubble,” in which an incredibly popular platform…

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