Where is the evidence for this hypothesis that it’s easier than ever before ? Communists, Nazis had absolutely no trouble destroying truth. History is full of this.
Your argument of "we've overcome similar things before" was dealt with in the documentary: this is always adapting to hook you in better, it benefits from massive social pressure and it's fueled by billions of $. So actually we've never overcome anything like this before and no one had such power before to spread misinformation.
One could argue that there's plenty of other reliable news sources, but for many reasons the trust in official news sources is collapsing. One reason is that social media has flooded the world with so much content that it's hard to figure out what's factual and what not.
No, it hasn’t been dealt with. My point is prior to 2004 there was enormous amount of disinformation in the world that had no trouble spreading quickly. The documentary presented no evidence that somehow people are now misinformed more than they had been in the past. Social media is one way to spread both information and misinformation but it’s not the only way and it’s not clear that its net effect is that people are misinformed more than before. I remember the world before iPhones and Facebook and I’d say average person in that world was totally misinformed about many things.
I think the poster above is suggesting that whatever conditions led to worldwide tensions (and world war) may be resurfacing now. Not that these tensions always existed to this degree. Just that they have before, and are again now.
In my experience I can safely say that Social Media impact on our information ecosystem is a huge step change from anything we have seen before, to the point that it is effectively new.
That the current problems build on human neuronal frailties that have existed since the dawn of time, is also true.
So it is natural this conversational junction will come up repeatedly in future conversations.
How do we answer it and settle the issue comprehensively? Hence the question.
IMO we can all see how the spread of misinformation is unproductive and benefits only a few stakeholders. So I have confidence that some way or another we will figure out a solution. It will be a new solution, unlike things we've experienced in the past, and it will also be similar to the past in that we will overcome it.
