> Hell, let's go outside and talk to each other again!

Once there's a viable vaccine, sure. I don't disagree about your point of the damage the lockdown has done, but USA governments and citizens haven't locked down consistently enough to provide the intended results.

Individuals do not have the capacity to inspect facts. Do you inspect how the cake flour met the FDA standards? You trust authority, in this case, the FDA + Store Owner + Distributor + Manufacturer.

This is so ridiculous. I think you mean we need to have the information so if an individual wants to verify, they can and if they can spend the energy and rigor to know the research/data. Please stop requiring individuals to verify truth. Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances. Reputable media is an authority of similar civic responsibility.

Next time you buy a measuring tape, you're gonna sound ridiculous to ask for a NIST certificate at Home Depot.

This is an absurd and breathtakingly dangerous argument. No, we don't expect people to inspect their own cake flour. But we do expect them to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to the basic political participation of voting. What you're advocating for is a kritarchy, with "reputable media" as the judges.

We've been trusting publishers of books for many decades before the internet. The internet has put in no checks and balances for publishing - any loud voice can rampantly go out and get 200,000k followers.

No one is taking away right to assemble in public. Twitter is a publisher with no quality checks in place.

Who trusted book publishers? What American can even name 3 of them, or could in the 1970s? This doesn't seem like a serious argument, and it gets less serious the further back in time you go and the more all of publishing resembled the Weekly World News.

Doesn't matter. It is obvious to see that publishes (newspapers, books) were the "gatekeepers" of massive, worldwide distribution of information.

I am pointing out the difference between traditional media and internet media. One has checks and balances, and the other is wild wild west.

Tell me more about the checks and balances that exist in book publishing. Publishers --- often mainstream publishers --- published the first editions of Mein Kampf, Camp of the Saints, Architects of Conspiracy, Did Six Million Really Die, and all manner of medical pseudoscience.

Definitely. It is obvious that there is some:

- Time to publish, it’s not instant like the internet

- Allows people to editorialize and review, even if they allow publishing

- Allow critics to voice their opinions before the book blows up

I’m in no way saying we need to have a CCP level control over what gets published or not, but I am just pointing out the virality of social media that didn’t exist before the internet.

You can make many arguments around it, the fact is that the internet fundamentally changed the way conspiracy theories propagate.

Even if controversial books are published, someone is going to a bookstore and buying it. There are reviews on ebooks. There is so much discussion. No such thing is exists in echo chambers.

We had echo chambers long before we had an Internet. Read Rick Perlstein on the John Birch Society, for instance.

> We had echo chambers long before we had an Internet.

Yes indeed. The Internet, as well as some other more modern communication technologies, has greatly optimized the proliferation and psychological impact of the echo chambers.

Probably a digression from OP's point, but perhaps a useful one:

Suppose two long paths leading home are filled with people.

Path one is a park filled with people reading various physical copies of books, one of whom looks up from their copy of Mein Kampf to say something threatening to you.

Path two is filled with innocuous-looking people, all glued to the screens of essentially the same model of smartphone. One of them looks up from their device just long enough to tell you, "Samy is my hero."

Which path do you take and why?

> But we do expect them to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to the basic political participation of voting.

Do we?

Let's address this on two levels: First do we really expect people to evaluate the facts relevant to who they choose to vote for? I mean on the one hand, the system does this, yes. But not because we have any particular amount of faith that everyone is ready to bear the responsibility. Instead, we're resigned to the fact that all the other options are worse. I mean the founders absolutely didn't trust the people to evaluate their leadership, unless you were willing to restrict the definition of "people" to "white male landowners".

Hell, even more, the constitution as written (and federalist 68 explicitly) suggested that the people themselves shouldn't select the president, but only select representatives who ultimately do the selection. The justification for this was that said representatives would hopefully be more capable than the average individual of weighing all of the requirements of the office.

So the founders certainly didn't share your faith. Nor, even today, does the constitution itself. Ultimately though, having a well informed populace is very different from having a kritarchy, and having reputable media is necessary for a well informed populace.

If you're bombarded with two contradictory pieces of information (which I'd argue is in many cases the explicitly strategy of some of the media), you either need to be an expert on the topic, or your only approach is to trust people. Like, are you really saying we expect the average American to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to economic policy? Nobel prize winners disagree!

But that's just the first layer. There's a second layer here:

At this point we're no longer talking about the political participation of voting. That's already happened. The votes are in. What we're talking about is asking people to evaluate the facts of obscure election law that's in most cases never been tested. The average American isn't a constitutional Judge. But, to use your word, the president has asked unelected judges to directly overrule the will of the people literally dozens of times. That's kritarchy (or just raw authoritarianism, your choice). The actual experts, the judges, have resoundingly said no. Like, among the experts, there is no controversy here. And yet the conspiracy theory persists. Why is that?

"Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances."

This statement stands in direct opposition to the primary founding principals of liberal democracy.

How should we decide whether to believe your comment? By appeal to some authority?

Do you trust your doctor? Do you consider the court as a misplaced authority? They make judgements, often nuances of interpretation based on their moral compass - they arbitrage truth from application of laws against evidence. In many cases, there is subjective interpretation and the "spirit of the law".

Of course they have the capacity to check facts, the means to do so are found on the same network where the fact-to-be-checked was found in the first place. Some people will check those facts, many others won't. If what is written is patently false this will come out soon enough.

You call to "stop requiring individuals to verify truth" can be phrased in another, more honest way: support specific organisations to decide where the truth lies. For simple facts - the current temperature, the price of petrol at the pump, the energy content of a portion of a given food - this works. For disputed facts - nearly anything related to SARS2, nearly anything related to climate, nearly anything related to nuclear power, nearly anything related to migration, the veracity and validity of identity politics, the absence or presence of "systemic" racism - this patently fails since the gatekeeper gets to impose its own views on the public. When that gatekeeper happens to be the 500lbs gorilla in the field that means the public has to do exactly what you decry to be ridiculous: they have to go check whether the presented facts are true or just the result of the gatekeeper projecting its opinions, a task made harder by that gatekeeper - the 500lbs gorilla - blocking opposing views from its platform.

On your measuring tape comparison I can state that measuring tapes sold in e.g. the Netherlands clearly state that they are not to be used for trading purposes ("niet voor handelsdoeleinden") since they are not officially calibrated. Just like scales, pumps and other measuring equipment measuring tapes/sticks/etc. used for trading purposes need to be calibrated, get stamped that they are, complete with a calibration expiry date. So, yes, if it really matters you do ask for a calibrated measuring device.