I read your comment as suggesting that this problem only needs to be addressed at the consumption end - that is, by empowering the public with better critical thinking skills. But I fundamentally disagree, both with the premise that people who are affected by misinformation simply lack critical thinking skills, and by the idea that this is a practical solution to the problem.
This perspective is popular among the intellectual crowd because it appeals to our shared love for learning, but also because it's self-congratulatory. It says "if people just had the skills I have, they wouldn't be taken in", but history shows that's not the case as a general statement. We're all affected by advertising, after all.
As for "outsourcing critical thinking to some trusted authority", that's one of the heuristics we all use, no matter how educated we are, and we all have a collection of trusted authorities. Educated people probably tend to have different trusted authorities and different ways of selecting them - they may produce a better outcome but the strategy is very similar.
For my part I think this problem needs to be addressed on the supply /distribution side as well. We need to work against the purveyors of lies and fraud, and that's how it's always been. That was how we cleaned up the patent medicine system and made the stock market more trustworthy, and in some form (probably not through the DoD) we as a society will need strategies to combat other kinds of misinformation as well.
This perspective is popular among the intellectual crowd because it appeals to our shared love for learning, but also because it's self-congratulatory. It says "if people just had the skills I have, they wouldn't be taken in", but history shows that's not the case as a general statement. We're all affected by advertising, after all.
As for "outsourcing critical thinking to some trusted authority", that's one of the heuristics we all use, no matter how educated we are, and we all have a collection of trusted authorities. Educated people probably tend to have different trusted authorities and different ways of selecting them - they may produce a better outcome but the strategy is very similar.
For my part I think this problem needs to be addressed on the supply /distribution side as well. We need to work against the purveyors of lies and fraud, and that's how it's always been. That was how we cleaned up the patent medicine system and made the stock market more trustworthy, and in some form (probably not through the DoD) we as a society will need strategies to combat other kinds of misinformation as well.