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> suggest that misinformation is some new phenomenon

Misinformation in this shape and form is a new phenomenon. And it is not just the scale;

- the number of agents that push their version of misinformation is at least an order of magnitude higher than ever, depending on the particular topic. So-called culture wars have so many different sides.

- technology not only scales misinformation, but it also accelerates it. The objective function of "increased engagement" meshes very well. Hard to grok, full fidelity facts don't get shared or recommended as much as rage-baiting or bias-confirming material.

- technology can on-the-fly piece together material to conform to whatever bullshit you want to hear, I want to hear or the other guy wants to hear. As it is optimized to increase engagement, it can efficiently generate personalized micro-narratives, which is ultimately a reflection of our personal biases.

The problems is it gets harder and harder for these narratives to converge. More on that below.

> If anything, what we're seeing with the internet is a more true democracy with a wider range of opinions, less controlled by small groups of plutocrats

As mentioned, original thoughts don't have the same propagation speed or reach as junk-infotainment, and you're just as subject to the narrative-shaping powers of those "plutocrats" as ever. They just blend in better.

But the larger issue is that you can't equivocate mere plurality with a functioning democracy. Ultimately there is a single reality, and even though we are in divergent positions due to having different entry points and framings, we should be - however little - converging in our narratives and understanding of that reality as time progresses.

But the opposite seems to be happening, we are getting dumber at scale, stuff makes less sense, institutional mistrust is at all-time-high. I am not putting this all on tech, but it certainly pours fuel on the fire of meaning-making crisis.

I wouldn't take it for granted that we could survive this without it creating a larger crisis first.

> institutional mistrust is at all-time-high

I want to point out that the biggest reason for this is that those institutions are worthy of mistrust, people just weren't aware of the need to mistrust them. The news media for instance has been gradually getting worse due to having to compete with internet sources and it was plenty shit back in the 60s and before...

Then there's things like the replication crisis damaging our trust in science-as-an-institution and the mask flip flopping damaging trust in science-as-communicated-by-prestigious-bodies.

And of course there's always departments attempting o justify their existence even when it makes everyone's lives harder for little gain (yes, I work for a mega Corp, how did you guess?).

Perhaps, then, we should aim our sights on the institutions and systems that incentivize and profit from the spread of misinformation rather than trying to treat the symptoms and censor misinformation outright. I’m always baffled in these free speech debates of the last 15-10 years why the end up reducing the landscape to a false dichotomy.

What I’m seeing is a disintegration of the narrative, with a relatively small group of disinformation plutocrats bombarding minds at scale with conflicting positions.

A compassionate view of humanity would say that humans are basically accepting. This openness can then be abused by viral misinformation. We could take the view that humans should just be self protecting and if they got duped that’s on them. But IMO that’s a depressing view of the world, and tends toward something like mutually assured social destruction in the limit. We need to protect our shared narrative.

Also personally I find the view that “democracy prevailed before, it’ll continue to prevail somehow” deeply unsatisfying. Democracy is not built into nature. It has to be proactively maintained and refreshed.

Democracy is struggling with misinformation because Governments are losing credibility with citizens, this is not my problem as a regular person.

I'm sick of hearing that it's up to "people" to be fed the right information so they behave the way that works for the Government and large corporations.

Why should I trust the WHO? Why should I trust the FDA? Why would I trust Johnson and Johnson? Why should I trust Pfizer? Why doesn't the Government fund an emergency trial on Ivermectin?

Do you know that these pharmaceutical companies cannot be sued if there is a problem with my health related to the COVID-19 vaccines? Why would I trust a system like that? Why wouldn't I be skeptical and why wouldn't fringe theories appear?

I don't want information to be hidden from me to influence my beliefs, I want all the information made possible to me so I can make up my own mind.

As Edward Snowden says, the worse conspiracies are in plain sight. I'm starting to think he might be right.

You can be skeptical about the vaccine, and fringe theories are normal and some are legitimate. It’s fully normal to be skeptical because you don’t have all the facts. But look at what Tucker Carlson is doing, as one example. He asserts outright falsehoods cynically. Take the wind turbine debacle in Texas for example. He asserted lies that frozen turbines caused the blackouts with implications that wind tech/greener tech is evil. Governor Abbot came on and added his authority to the disinformation. People believed it and got outraged. I watch political Twitter a lot and I can literally see how a cynical lie begins, produces outrage, and goes viral. What’s your opinion on that phenomenon? It seems that has something to do with governments losing credibility.

There's the saying: "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater". What you are saying is true, but we need to hear the voices that would otherwise be unfairly silenced as well.

Tucker Carlson may have a baby face, but he's no baby. He's the very reason you throw out used bathwater: He's the scum that floats on top of it.

> Why doesn't the Government fund an emergency trial on Ivermectin?

Because there's no evidence that it would work? Nobody has explained how it's supposed to act on COVID-19, when it's a nerve poison for invertebrates.

There's not infinite time and effort available for patiently trying every theory with no sound basis, and the worst thing is that there have been small trials with poor or inconclusive results which people ignore. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ivermectin-is-the-new-hydro...

4 theorized mechanisms of action for ivermectin against SarsCov2. https://youtu.be/9bgcgiutrw8

No Youtube "doctors", proper sources only please.

I can understand why you may think science is only on "paper", but discussions are happening on YT and I think it is only going to increase over time.

> discussions are happening on YT and I think it is only going to increase over time.

Which is a very fitting observation in this thread on the continuing stupidification of societal debate.

Only perhaps not in the way you intended.

https://c19ivermectin.com/

> there's no evidence that it would work

That's quite a silly view. In silico evidence shows that ivermectin can bind to spike protein, main viral protease, and replication proteins:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996102/

Calling ivermectin the same as HCQ is a strawman approach.

>Calling ivermectin the same as HCQ is a strawman approach.

Actually, this is the perfect example, as the main compound in HCQ has been proven in several studies unrelated to COVID19, to specifically prevent the 'jelly-lungs' that people with severe critical-case COVID19 died from in high numbers.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209939/

Preliminary Evidence demonstrates Ivermectin does improve outcomes with those infected with COVID-19.

It'd be worth it just to kill off the conspiracy theory.

I mean, if you don’t trust institutions why trust democracy ?

While it's the best we could create, but that does not mean that it's anywhere close to being perfect and deserves to be trusted automatically.

Skepticism is exactly what makes democracy working. Blind trust is what allows bad actors to transform a democracy into a dictatorship.

You speak as if past dictators were not democratically elected or journalists never uncovered corruption in government and institutions.

There's a difference between "skepticism" and raving fucking loonery, and 99.99% of what's proliferating online nowadays is the latter. Shit like that also transforms democracies into dictatorships, at least as much as "blind trust" does.

i hope your getting paid to do so cause thats a full time job. we have to trust some. the gate keepers can be rife with corruption and other influences. most do not have time to validate most things is mostly what i am saying.

there needs to be a middle of control and freedom without the bullshit.

> Also personally I find the view that “democracy prevailed before, it’ll continue to prevail somehow” deeply unsatisfying.

As somebody from a Western country that has gone from democracy -> dictatorship -> democracy within the last 100 years, I couldn't agree more (I'm German). Democracy is fragile and has been under increasing threat for the last 15 years or so, unfortunately partly accelerated by social media.

If we can't agree that democracy is the foundation for freedom of speech, and that there are actors (foreign and domestic) using misinformation to erode trust in democracy, I'm bearish for the future of democracy (at least in the US).

> If we can't agree that democracy is the foundation for freedom of speech

We won't because freedom of speech is the foundation for a healthy democracy, not the other way round. Socrates was executed at the behest of a tyrannical democracy - the original democracy - for his speech.

How do you propose to achieve freedom of speech, in order to have a democracy on top? What prior-to-democracy system would lead toward that free speech? Or do you believe free speech exists by itself in nature, prior to any system?

Correct me if I'm wrong, you seem to be saying that free speech can't exist without democracy.

Firstly, free speech is not a synonym for democracy, we can clearly see there are democracies with differing levels of free speech, some with very low levels.

Secondly, most of the other systems of political organisation are antithetical to free speech. That does not mean, however, that democracy is a necessary pre-requisite for free speech. I can imagine other systems - as have others - but that they do not exist is either because they cannot or because the conditions for them to hold are not there yet.

Finally

> Or do you believe free speech exists by itself in nature, prior to any system?

I'm not a student and this is not a student debating society, please make your points in a way that an adult and professional would expect and can respect. I don't know you, it's far too early for you to take the piss. Try and get into a conversation first, at the very least.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, you seem to be saying that free speech can't exist without democracy.

No, parent is saying freedom of speech is a consequence of democracy, not that one wouldn't exist without the other or that they are synonymous.

One can, as you have, construct and imagine all kinds of political systems where one exists without the other (e.g. Greece 400 BC, benevolent dictator etc). This leads to rather contrived arguments that miss the point at hand: Freedom of speech has almost always been a consequence of modern democracy.

Your flippant response in the last paragraph makes me believe you aren't convinced in your argumentation either.

> No, parent is saying freedom of speech is a consequence of democracy

Then you'll need to explain these questions:

> What prior-to-democracy system would lead toward that free speech? Or do you believe free speech exists by itself in nature, prior to any system?

Without them I might agree. With them, the inference is impossible to ignore.

> Freedom of speech has almost always been a consequence of modern democracy.

No one was saying anything else. It's starting to look like you aren't going to shine a light on what I've missed but what you've missed.

> Your flippant response in the last paragraph makes me believe you aren't convinced in your argumentation either.

Flippancy is a manifestation of doubt, now there's a claim I've not heard before. The world is indeed full of wonder and mystery!

> Democracy thrived before the printing press

No it didn't.

Do you have examples of democracies before the printing press besides Athens and arguably the late Roman Republic? Those happened nearly two millenniums before the press and didn't last that long. "Thriving"?

When and where did democracy thrive before the printing press?

Ancient Greece perhaps? Though not in medieval Europe, at least not that I'm aware off.

Europe had them in the middle ages too: Italy's seafaring republics (Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, Pisa et al) where (nominal) democracies, practically owned the Mediterranean sea and lasted a thousand years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_republics

The Norse also had many democratic customs.

Evidenced in the Icelandic sagas, c.f. https://www.sagadb.org/

The Iroquois confederation, known to its members as the Haudenosaunee.

The vast majority of Slavic tribes 0-1100AD were effective democracies...even the majority of Polish kings post-Christian-indoctrination (1000-1800AD) featured an elected monarchy.

Indeed. One wonders how much of this threat of misinformation is being pushed by the mainstream media who at one time was the authority on truth.

Nothing is more dangerous than someone being striped of power they considered rightfully theirs.