The censorship of the good information is the problem. And it probably started with censorship of bad information that lead to the bubble in the first place.
>work on preventative measures so people are never exposed
This is where the analogy breaks down, its not a virus, its an idea, anyone can come up with an idea, good or bad. you want to protect people from themselves, you must immunize them from the bad ideas they could come up with. We know it works, it was the only vehicle from the dark ages to the enlightenment.
We also have the problem that if you set up a perfect system of blocking bad ideas, the people who run it can have bad ideas of their own. Hell the mechanism we have to even tell the difference between bad ideas and good ideas in society (open free discourse) will have been destroyed.
There are plenty of examples of people trying to do this around the world, tyrants and hell-holes created with the best of intentions.
There is nothing nefarious about bubbles. They happen automatically when people are in control of what they consume. Imagine I join Twitter and I am given a list of people to follow. I don't like to hear from people with viewpoints that I think are crazy so I unfollow someone if they say something I disagree with. If some gets retweeted into my feed saying something I agree with, I might follow them regardless of the validity of their comment since I don't have the time or motivation to fact check everything. Wouldn't you know it, I am now in a bubble despite there being zero censorship of anything. If one of the people in my bubble repeats some false claim, am I going to see someone dispute that claim or will the disputing occur outside my bubble?
>This is where the analogy breaks down, its not a virus, its an idea, anyone can come up with an idea, good or bad. you can't protect people from themselves, you can only immunize them, we know it works, it was the only vehicle from the dark ages to the enlightenment.
Ideas do have virality to them. Something like QAnon is a prime example. Is isn't like "wealthy democrats drink the blood of children" is some random idea that multiple people reached through parallel thinking. It was a particular conspiracy theory that spread from one person to another. Stopping that message from spreading to more people seems like a more effective approach than trying to retroactively unconvince people who have already bought into the conspiracy.
I agree with the rest of your comment about the dangers of censorship. That is why I said I would have a preference for something that is closer to free and open than not, but that doesn't mean we can't recognize the specific situations in which completely free and open systems can go wrong.
It's foolish to think that censoring these people actually solves anything. Because you never addressed the broken psychology that attracts them to this garbage in the first place, they'll continue finding other outlets, your attempts to censor them only feeding their delusions further. Censorship might help you avoid them on the internet, but let's see if you can avoid them at the polls.
[1] In Search Of A Flat Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
Its still censorship, but i see what you are getting at.
> Stopping that message from spreading to more people seems like a more effective approach
Your example would be stopped whether true or false, as it would likely be the wealthy in charge of whats deemed true.
How? The bubble is purely a result of my own choices in what I see. Is CNN being censored if I don't tune in to watch every night?
>Your example would be stopped whether true or false, as it would likely be the wealthy in charge of whats deemed true.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with QAnon, but I was referencing an actual real world conspiracy that hasn't been stopped.
This is repeated so much it is practically a meme at this point, but is there anything to actually back it up? Especially when users have the ability to control what they see. If someone is in a bubble of disinformation, it doesn't matter how many voices outside the bubble try to debunk those claims.
It seems like a more effective approach would to be to work on preventative measures so people are never exposed to these harmful beliefs rather than wait until these beliefs are heard and then try to convince them they are wrong.