You can find many examples of continued and relentless lies from all these classes of people over the years and decades. Is it really a surprise that people will stop listening to them?
So why do I believe it? Because it makes sense to me. I would guess that it's the same for everyone else. By trying to prevent this lie from being spread you are rejecting the fact that I reached this conclusion in a valid manner because you don't agree with it.
That's an opinion, not a lie. A lie would be saying "pigs grow on trees", "in a monarchy the king is chosen in an election every four years" or "the earth is flat", to put some examples.
> So why do I believe it? Because it makes sense to me.
What is it then, people believe lies because it makes sense to them or because other people lie?
Because reality is not so clear cut as "pigs grow on trees". No one is claiming anything as ludicrous as pigs grow on trees in our political debates. Disagreeing with most of the narrative on climate change is not the same as saying pigs grow on trees, for instance.
The only way you can have a free exchange of ideas is if people are allowed to disagree, and yes this includes basic "facts" of reality.
You think speech should be censured, removed, and controlled? Okay, your speech first.
In other words, do I think you should be able to say that "the earth is flat"? Yes. Do I think that social media should give more visibility to content that says "the earth is flat" than to content that says "well it is not flat" just because the first generates more engagement? No. It's not the speech that's harmful, is the selective amplification that social media does.
That's precisely the point I'm making, nobody needs to decide what is a lie or what is not. Social media amplifies lies not by knowing what is a lie, but because of their nature. Lies generate more controversy and more discussion, true facts generate agreement but not a lot of discussion and engagement. Reduce the importance of "engagement metrics" in the algorithms that show you content, make them as straightforward as possible (chronological order for example), reduce or eliminate suggestions of "content you might like" and only show content you explicitly subscribed to. At no point anyone needs to say "this is a lie/truth", you just need to change incentives.
If we would put restrictions on social media and let the big media companies decide what is "consensus reality" like they are so vehemently arguing for, then everybody would also be living in a fake reality, the only difference is that it would be the same for everyone, which might obscure the fakeness for a while. I agree it's a difficult subject but I genuinely think the current situation is at least a little bit better.
Of course it will be difficult and not straightforward, and there will be challenges to control big media, but at least we align the incentives in the good direction. The current situation is awful: chaos and a push towards polarization, because that's what generates engagement.
Not just "I don't like", but things that "aren't true". There's a difference, and it's important.
> How so? Like GP said, you can just not use facebook and freely exchange ideas with your peers through other channels.
The how is that the constant exposure to lies makes people doubt everything. A lie is easy to fabricate, will create controversy, and social media will reward that controversy and show that lie to even more people. A truth usually requires more research, and given that more people agree with it it will create less controversy, less engagement and the platforms will not reward that content.
That's how you end up with what you have now: people living in completely different realities because the things that spread the most are lies. You can't have a free exchange of ideas if people don't agree in basic facts of reality.
We really can't ignore the damage that social media is doing to society by dismissing the concerns as "well it's just that people have different opinions". It's not about the opinions, it's about the type of content that gets rewarded now.