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Elle Griffin's avatar

I agree with everything you said, and yet I still feel that there must be something we can do to stem the harmful kind of misinformation that is not censorship.

For instance, on Substack everyone can say whatever they want and the most outrageous thing someone can say may be read by the people who follow them, but it won’t reach the rest of us who aren’t in that sphere. If they do pop into our spheres somehow, they are easily blocked or reporters by readers. Most likely that community will stay small and/or blocked by people who don’t want to see it and thus it won’t gain traction the way outrageous things do on other platforms. We can self regulate our own little communities without needing someone above us to make that choice for us. This seems a better way to design.

As for presidential candidates, I’m not sure the right answer. Again, it’s not censorship, but perhaps there is something else. Like independent writers who have gained trust for taking a bi-partisan view. Who can research the answers and share their own independent fact checking with an audience that doesn’t trust Fox News or CNN to do it. Less partisan media sources might be a good solution.

I agree that misinformation has always been an issue, but it has also adapted for our times, and that means adapting how we handle it. Censorship is not the answer, but I think there are other things that could be and it’s worth coming up with those solutions.

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Justin D's avatar

We are in some sort of epistemic crisis. The "experts" are claiming that misinformation is our greatest threat while at the same time public trust in many institutions is declining. For me, the issue seems to be that there is little (if any) accountability for when these institutions mislead the public, much like there is little accountability for scientific fraud. Unfortunately, this incompetence opens the door for misinformation. People want to go back to a world where these institutions are trusted again, but they don't deserve our trust and they don't seem willing to change or even acknowledge that they are part of the problem.

We are getting to the point where there simply are no universally trusted sources of truth in our society.

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