A decade of fact‑checking, moderation, and anti‑disinfo campaigns hasn’t measurably improved public knowledge or institutional trust. The dominant true/false, persuasion‑centric paradigm likely misdiagnosed the main failure modes of the information ecosystem. Defending democracy should shift from content policing toward rebuilding institutional legitimacy and addressing demand‑side drivers of belief.
— If the core policy frame is wrong, media, governments, and platforms need to reallocate effort from fact‑checks to institutional performance, incentive design, and trust‑building.
2025.10.07
90% relevant
Yglesias cites recent research (Nyhan/Thorson) showing fringe, low exposure to online falsehoods and argues the real hazard is elite‑driven misbeliefs—like intelligence agencies’ Iraq WMD assessments and the maternal‑mortality narrative—misdirecting media, public opinion, and policy.
2025.10.07
88% relevant
The authors argue fact‑checking and sloganized 'trust the science' responses misdiagnosed the core failure—eroded trust from expert overconfidence, suppressed debate, and tribal signaling—echoing the call to prioritize institutional legitimacy over content policing.
2025.10.07
70% relevant
The author argues that blaming 'misinformation' for authoritarian appeal misdiagnoses the main drivers and that overbroad 'misinformation' frames can become self‑serving, echoing the existing idea’s claim that the disinformation paradigm has been overbuilt at the expense of institutional performance and trust.
2025.10.07
73% relevant
Gioia argues the core crisis is collapsing trust in experts and institutions (e.g., replication failures), not just bad content online—directly echoing the claim that focusing on 'misinformation' misdiagnoses the problem and that rebuilding institutional legitimacy is the real lever.
2025.10.07
74% relevant
Lee and Macedo frame COVID failures as institutional and evidence‑use failures (e.g., ignoring WHO’s Nov 2019 guidance and weak evidence for NPIs) and discuss 'noble lies,' aligning with the thesis that focusing on 'disinformation' missed the deeper governance and trust problem.
msmash
2025.10.02
60% relevant
The new low in media trust after years of anti‑disinformation efforts supports the claim that fact‑checking and moderation campaigns have not improved public confidence and may be targeting the wrong levers.
Kelsey Piper
2025.10.01
86% relevant
Piper argues that the Biden administration’s pressure on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to remove COVID 'misinformation' was illegitimate and likely counterproductive, because prior public‑health errors and lack of accountability eroded trust—echoing the idea that fact‑checking/moderation campaigns misdiagnosed the problem and harmed institutional legitimacy.
Noah Smith
2025.09.25
50% relevant
The article challenges the 'anti‑disinfo hasn’t worked' frame by citing Costello et al. (2024), where structured GPT‑4 conversations cut conspiracy beliefs 20% with durable effects, implying AI may be an effective corrective rather than just a source of harm.
BeauHD
2025.09.23
62% relevant
YouTube says it will pivot away from platform‑run fact‑checking toward user context notes while reinstating previously banned creators, echoing the critique that content policing hasn’t fixed trust and that legitimacy requires different approaches.
Robin Hanson
2025.08.31
60% relevant
Hanson argues collective, high‑stakes choices are driven by symbols and sacredness with post‑hoc rationalizations, which aligns with the claim that content policing and fact‑checking won’t restore rational policy; the real lever is institutional design that produces trustworthy, goal‑aligned decisions.
Zeve Sanderson
2025.08.26
100% relevant
NYU’s Zeve Sanderson and Scott Babwah Brennen note trust decay, platform pullbacks from moderation, and limited results despite the WEF ranking misinformation as a top global risk.
Dan Williams
2025.08.08
80% relevant
The article argues propaganda is about intent, not just false content or 'manipulative' techniques, and can deploy objective data and peer‑reviewed studies—aligning with the claim that fact‑checking and content policing misdiagnose the epistemic failure mode.
Dominic Cummings
2025.07.25
70% relevant
He quotes No10 and commentators (e.g., Lewis Goodall) framing the grooming‑gang story as tech‑platform radicalization and 'far‑right' disinfo, which he says diverted attention from real victims and institutional failure—an example of over‑indexing on 'disinfo' narratives.
Dan Williams
2025.07.19
86% relevant
Williams and Mounk argue the term 'misinformation' has become a catch‑all for disliked views, that obvious falsehoods mostly circulate among already‑extreme users, and that elite institutions spread their own misleading narratives—implying that trust and institutional performance, not content policing, are the main levers.