[Mezzie]

Here are the things that I think most discussions of Digital Citizenship/Information Literacy/Disinformation Mitigation etc. miss:

* People's time and especially their mental bandwidth are limited and there exist large swaths of the citizenry who are not students. This paper touches on this when it suggests that lateral research into a source is a less onerous task than reading the text itself deeply and acquiring the necessary background context to evaluate content on its own. But that still requires knowledge, skills, and expertise that a lot of the population does not have. Acquiring it is likely feasible for students, but it is not for a single mom of 3 kids working 2 jobs, many retirees, etc. A lot of America's population (the country I am most familiar with) is running with 95%+ of their bandwidth taken up at all times, especially post COVID when so many places are understaffed and it's more cost effective to force existing employees to do 2+ jobs. Tired people do not have the energy to change their habits, learn new tools, etc. There's also much less tech literacy than we would expect. As an example, my current boss who has run a successful local business for over a decade can't sort a Google Sheet. Expecting her to sit down and learn these skills when she's running a business and parenting 2 children under five is futile.

* Information Literacy skills are not stagnant as the falsehood/clickbait/etc. problem is an arms race with several well-funded and well-researched actors having incentives to adapt to whatever tools and habits people do adopt. We can't just teach one set of skills and expect them to work 30, 40+ years on. As an example, lateral researching works well if your other sources stay stable and reliable but that is not what happens. Enshittification, buy-outs, etc. mean that constant re-evaluation of sources is needed. It is not a one and done, and there are great economic incentives to fight people doing this.

* Almost all work addressing the problem has focused on people attacking misinformation and falsehoods from an individual standpoint. Most people evaluate information in some sort of community context. One reason I think that I do alright is that I have families that are all tech-literate and span 5 generations and multiple political views and none of us have turned into conspiracy theorists. If my cousins and I roast each other for using poor information sources, we can trust that we a.) have an idea of what we're talking about and b.) have each other's best interest in mind despite our disagreements. This makes it far easier to listen to critique from the 'other' side and to have our filter bubbles pierced.

My POV: I'm a librarian from a tech family who has been online for over 30 years. I've also done professional fact-checking and worked in politics/civics communication.

[avgcorrection]

What's a conspiracy theorist?