I may have misread you. In which case, consider my response to a not-infrequent assertion that individual responsibility and media literacy alone, absent some general social value of individual and institutional epistemic integrity is sufficient. That really does not seem to work.

And rereading this thread, particularly your response here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23447763), that seems to me close to your argument. If not from scratch and first principles, in large part.

If not, care to restate?

It's less the obligation to validate, and more the licence to bullshit, that concerns me. Brandolini's asymmetry is steep. I've spent more time than I'd have liked around intentionally devceptive persons, and institutions (and machines). The experience is virtually always tremendously umsettling, at best.

There are reasons why social, moral, and legal strictures against deception, fraud, and betrayal of trusts run so deep, with frictions against values of free expression. Dante put bearers of false witness in the penultimate circle of his Hell.