This is a great episode of @yourewrongabout, about misinformation, why it ends up affecting older people the most/worst, and why the bulk of it comes from the right. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/los…
One of the grimmest conclusions of the research (which I'm glad Michael highlighted) is that once people are convinced of loopy conspiracy theories, it is almost impossible to talk them out of it. The only way to prevent misinfo from spreading is to prevent exposure.
But how do you prevent exposure? The only way is to have trusted institutions that you can rely on to vet information ("gatekeepers," as I said the other day to much outrage) before it's "out there." Michael gestures at putting more responsibility on the social media cos ...
... but I really don't think that's going to work. They are market actors; they profit from the very stuff they're supposed to be vetting. In my view, there's no way around the need for restoring social trust in the institutions we built for this very task!
Journalism. Science. Academia. We built these as truth-seeking & information-vetting institutions. Yes, they all have their flaws, but the 60+ year conservative quest to destroy trust in them has shown what will replace them: nothing. Chaos. And eventually authoritarianism.
If progressives ever want to see...progress, they can't just build their own propaganda machine, a mirror image of Fox et al. Progressive change *depends on trusted institutions*, governed by law & principle, transparent & accountable. It depends on social solidarity.
It's fine to criticize institutions & protest when they become captured by a class or clique, but the whole "burn it down" shtick is a dead end for the left. Chaos is a ladder for the ruthless & powerful; only fact-based, law-bound society can offer a ladder for the downtrodden.
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