[worldsayshi]

Thank you. Haven't seen this problem framed in quite this way before. I find the point quite persuasive.

But, I don't understand how this step could possibly work:

> start policing on what opinions those people are allowed to have and what measures to take to them

A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.

[augment_me]

It's a good suggestion, but the thing is that the average person does not care and does not want to use your tools. You can make an app that gives you correct news, where you can vote for local political issues, etc. Most people don't give a shit, you as a state are competing against the attention economy(evolving into an affection economy given LLM use).

You are competing against companies that are using biologically wired mechanisms, like short-burst 3-second information overload together with marketing signaling(consumer neuroscience) to make you do choices and then confabulate the choice to yourself as your own.

Any tool would have to either be made in a landscape where ALL of the attention/affection-economy tools are banned, OR use the same mechanisms.

[worldsayshi]

I agree but I also think that authenticity is one quality that such a tool could offer that other things in the attention economy cannot.

Addictive things are addictive. But people are also capable, given the right circumstances, to go and "touch grass". People are capable of making choices that are good for them. Especially if we make those choices easy enough.

I often scroll too much but I also go into nature and meet irl humans. And it's not close to an insurmountable choice.

[Meneth]

> A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.

Which tools, specifically? I know none.

[worldsayshi]

I mean that we are in dire need of such tools!

I also am not aware of any existing tools.