Liberals want to blame rightwing ‘misinformation’ for our problems. Get real | Digital media | The Guardian
One day in March 2015, I sat in a theater in New York City and took careful notes as a series of personages led by Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates described the dazzling sunburst of liberation that was coming our way thanks to entrepreneurs, foundations and Silicon Valley. The presentation I remember most vividly was that of a famous TV actor who rhapsodized about the wonders of Twitter, Facebook and the rest: No matter which platform you prefer, she told us, social media has given us all an extraordinary new world, where anyone, no matter their gender, can share their story across communities, continents and computer screens. A whole new world without ceilings.
Six years later and liberals can t wait for that extraordinary new world to end. Today we know that social media is what gives you things like Donald Trump s lying tweets, the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol riot of 6 January. Social media, we now know, is a volcano of misinformation, a non-stop wallow in hatred and lies, generated for fun and profit, and these days liberal politicians are openly pleading with social media s corporate masters to pleez clamp a ceiling on it, to stop people from sharing their false and dangerous stories.
A reality crisis is the startling name a New York Times story recently applied to this dismal situation. An information disorder is the more medical-sounding label that other authorities choose to give it. Either way, the diagnosis goes, we Americans are drowning in the semiotic swirl. We have come loose from the shared material world, lost ourselves in an endless maze of foreign disinformation and rightwing conspiracy theory.
In response, Joe Biden has called upon us as a nation to defend the truth and defeat the lies . A renowned CNN journalist advocates a harm reduction model to minimize information pollution and deliver the rational views that the public wants. A New York Times writer has suggested the president appoint a federal reality czar who would help the Silicon Valley platform monopolies mute the siren song of QAnon and thus usher us into a new age of sincerity.
The First Amendment, for me but not for thee.