Most people are terrible judges of character and honesty, especially when dealing with psychopaths. Bernie Madoff met most of his victims IRL and they completely trusted him.
IRL is definitely not fallible but it's better than the internet-only. To my knowledge there's no way to stop a motivated and skilled actor, like a Bernie Madoff
It pains me that this feels true as someone chronically online and used to find great use from the internet, but online-only has more failure modes now. There's still ways to do it though.
I think you meant to say "infallible" (or remove the "not").
This is the only way. The cost of spinning up a new identity on the web (with supporting documents, pictures, etc) is near zero now. There's only 3 or 4 things to really vet people, and those can be faked with more effort.
The only real way to vet someone nowadays is IRL, and that requires non-trivial effort but provides most guarantees you'd want in new participants in an online community.
> I'm getting a sense of being close to that point already and I don't know what the right move is from here to reduce the fracturing of my wider social circles.
I have this feeling too. My guess is that social circles will be less fluid and dynamic. Traditional centers of trust will become more important.