Ben Thompson is one of those rare people who can actually do "fair and balanced" in a way that doesn't treat atrocious views as a simple and innocent matter of opinion.

I used to be all aboard the "social media is the problem" train, but...

>> "The point of this is not to debate whether or not the email story was true, or Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Rather, it’s to establish that while social media publishes everything, from mountains of misinformation and conspiracy theories to critical information about an impending pandemic, making something matter requires more than manufacturing zero marginal cost content. The New York Times has that power by default, while Twitter and Facebook only has that power to the extent they do the opposite of what most expect from them (which is to act as a utility for the conveyance of information)."

It really does seem like a long list of Very Serious News Organizations taking it seriously enough to publish hundreds of articles on these things does more harm than it floating out there in the goofball ether. No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. They're still going to, because it's profitable, so the solution is probably not "block it" or "don't write about it." The article has some good ideas.

edit: in particular the comparison between responses from Twitter and Facebook. Facebook slowed rather than blocked. That gave fact checkers time to warm up without dumping go juice into the conspiracy loop. I haven't heard the same apoplectic screaming about Facebook.