Only distributed fact-checking can keep up with democratized distribution
I agree with the author that optimizing for virality as the bottom line is a disaster than can only go on for so long. Its consequences are obvious at this point, and it&#x27;s not leading to good places anywhere it is applied en masse. (For those unconvinced, I encourage to read about how the most viral and captivating content is often content that purposefully instills anger, fear, outgroup-hatred, schadenfreude, etc)<p>But deciding that we &#x27;just need to fact-check&#x27; things more seems to be a very incomplete solution. Much is said about &quot;who gets to fact-check?&quot; but I think even if we assume the people fact-checking are good (morally) and mostly very correct (veridically), this solution will still fall extremely short.<p>Even if you perform good fact-checking, there is little evidence that this will achieve your goal, which is not actually correcting text on the Internet, but correcting peoples’ beliefs in their own minds, which turns out to be pretty difficult (telling people they are wrong while removing content they want to read is likely not the best way, even so).<p>Remember that many rights that you take for granted were only gained thanks to the failures of past powers to control the narrative as strictly as they wanted to. While I don&#x27;t think that anyone can control &#x27;the narrative&#x27; so to speak, especially not a single company or government (that currently exists), we will still see ceaseless attempts at such; the temptation to correct everyone is just too great (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;386&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;386&#x2F;</a>, anyone?), especially if you believe you&#x27;re on the side of Virtue (which it turns out, almost everyone believes).