Two Takes on Disinformation
Bubba
01 Oct
As trust in democracy falls in the U.S. and beyond, is disinformation the root cause, or just a symptom of a bigger problem? (RealClearPolitics)
Take 1: Speaking at a World Economic Forum panel last week, former Secretary of State John Kerry suggested disinformation is a major factor in the destabilization of democracies around the world, and the First Amendment is an obstacle to fighting it.
Kerry:
The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn't a fact have kind of been eviscerated … If people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just hammer it out of existence.
Take 2: At the World Government Summit in February, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said that, while disinformation is a threat, the reason people listen to it in the first place is because “the primary functions of their government aren't working."
Karp:
And so you have to fix those underlying functions. Pretending that [disinformation] is the primary risk to democracy is totally a backfire move. … But the primary risk to a society is not fake information. It's a society that's willing to believe the fake information because they're wondering, why doesn't my school work? Why doesn't my border work? Why have I been taught things in school that don't work?
Related: Democrats have ramped up their efforts to crackdown on disinformation, while a majority of U.S. journalists think some information should be gatekept.
Bubba’s Two Cents
Are our leaders in government failing us, or are bad actors using social media to fool us into thinking things are worse than they really are? That’s basically what this debate boils down to. Whatever the answer is, trying to control the narrative using heavy-handed measures (like social media censorship and government regulation) is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.