You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
You’re both right which is the real conundrum. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that conspiracy theories and propaganda in our hyperconnected social media fueled internet are incredibly dangerous and rot the foundations of democracy. Democracy can not survive if these kinds of things are left unchecked. By the same token however any mechanism that immediately springs to mind to combat them is ripe for abuse and easily subverted by fascists and totalitarians. I honestly don’t know what the solution is, only that we desperately need one.
TL;DR: of that whole thing boils down to “the problem is too hard to solve and all the solutions are worse than the problem so don’t even try”. I don’t agree with the premise because if we accept it, then democracy is doomed.
We can not have a functioning society when we can’t even get a majority of the citizens to agree on basic aspects of reality and half the people are convinced the other half are lizard people that are putting mind control drugs in the water supply. A functioning democracy requires an informed and educated populace, and unchecked propaganda, disinformation, and conspiracy theories lead to the opposite of that, particularly when you have a wealthy group that profits from spreading it.
That’s a fair conclusion to draw, but that very well might mean you have to physically fight for the outcome you want.