Sure, but now now I – an idiot – can publish a podcast on... "Bayesian Multilevel Models," and fool almost everyone into thinking I know anything about it.
I've seen YouTubers provide tutorials on auto-creating YouTube videos and podcast episodes on niche scientific subjects, on how to build seemingly-reputable brands with zero ongoing effort. That is all totally novel. Being able to lie or be wrong before is orthogonal to the real issue: scale.
If the people interacting are not reliable, then it means the system is not reliable. Karma points, youtube views, thumbs ups, likes... none of those things have any significant value as an indicator of correctedness.
It takes time for humans to say false things, record and edit them.
This tech can allow "content creators" to spin hundreds of podcasts with garbage simultaneously, saturating the search space with nonsense. Similar to what is already being done with text everywhere.
What makes one skeptic regarding conspiracionist ideas is access and visibility to more enlightened content. If that access gets disrupted (it already has been), many people will not be able to tell the difference, specially future generations.
I've seen YouTubers provide tutorials on auto-creating YouTube videos and podcast episodes on niche scientific subjects, on how to build seemingly-reputable brands with zero ongoing effort. That is all totally novel. Being able to lie or be wrong before is orthogonal to the real issue: scale.