We should be educating people to think for themselves instead of advocating for centralized authorities who think for you.
One of the weirdest things I’m reckoning with is that objectivity isn’t optimal. That you’ll be most successful based on a relative positioning of beliefs (either towards or against a given common perspective) rather than being “objective” in most areas.
I suspect actually if you want to shape public opinion you do what Twitter and Meta are probably doing by the scenes, put your thumb on the scales around what goes viral. Which is much more terrifying than “fact checking”
So in the end it amounts to the same difference, average people will believe wrong things often with little impact, experts will believe wrong things rarely with lots of impact. Additionally, it's not like experts or authorities cannot contribute, they would just be on a more equal footing and would need to do more work than in a situation where there is censorship or control of information.
While I don't disagree that people could be better prepared by our education system, they also have to want to be capable of thinking for themselves.
But when I log on to social media to rant about how UFOs are time-traveling humans, I don't want a teal-colored, official-looking div element to alert the world that the online version of my personal expression is objectively wrong.
So where does the line get drawn? Many believe that American style free speech goes too far and enables the malicious freedom to manipulate
Also, online platforms are currently anti-competitive, so when you don't agree with the provider, there are significant costs to choosing another. That's why efforts like ATProto & ActivityPub are important to the next generation of social media applications.
There are of course exceptions when the domain is specific and focused enough, but in general, even experts will make mistakes and cannot process so much information. For me it's about keeping an open mind, and being conscious of getting exposed to a variety of opinions and perspectives.
The problem from both the general public and the experts tends to be lack of epistemic humility, i.e. getting too entrenched in your own beliefs and refusing to consider alternatives.