[neogodless]

This is essentially an "individual responsibility" argument.

Do I think people "should" be individually responsible? Yes. Do I believe that's going to happen? No.

Forty years ago we got our news from a handful of networks that stuck to "the middle". It was no doubt imperfect, but if they would post crazy conspiracy on the nightly news, they would quickly vanish as a network. On the other hand, convince a few million individuals to share a far left or far right story full of misinformation, and it works. The individuals are not "shamed" into avoiding that mistake again.

[ksk]

Its also a "facebook is not a news organization or a fact checking organization with access to an army of experts in every domain" argument.

>Forty years ago we got our news from a handful of networks that stuck to "the middle". It was no doubt imperfect, but if they would post crazy conspiracy on the nightly news, they would quickly vanish as a network.

I do not think that rumors and misinformation were less prevalent 40 years ago. Is there any consensus (not sparse data) on that? My hunch is that we're in a much better situation today than ever before. Aanyone with an internet connection and some free time has the ability to fact-check a piece of news. This was not available to people earlier, so they had to use their judgement and either choose to believe it or not.