Microblog Memes

On the plus side I guess: accessing good, robust information has literally never been easier as long as you're media-literate enough not to fall into the landfill of trash information that you're walking over.

• During its start in the 2000s and early 2010s, Wikipedia was like a shadow of what it is today. As an example, take a look at the article for the element oxygen in 2006 (ignore the broken templates) and the article today. Its editors were just as smart, well-meaning, and hard-working, but guidelines and a deeply entrenched culture hadn't emerged around making sure things are as verifiable, reliable, independent, unbiased, inclusive, and comprehensive and as possible. It's kind of insane how much you can find there now as a starting point for further research. Wikipedia also forced the web-ification of Britannica, meaning even if you deeply distrust Wikipedia for some reason, you no longer need to pay hundreds to have an encyclopedia in your home.
• Additionally, I imagine there are serious, experienced editors who are using LLMs to great effect as essentially a search engine on steroids to find obscure information, thereby speeding up their work (and they have the media literacy from years or decades of editing Wikipedia to wield this responsibly). Those who use it irresponsibly seem to be very quickly found out, although because I can't prove a negative, I can't say how much slop has slipped through the cracks.
• Extremely niche hobbies and specialties have e.g. YouTube channels, subreddits/communities, etc. dedicated just to them providing a fantastic wealth of knowledge. Right now, I can go watch Gutsick Gibbon on YouTube to catch up on various findings in primatology from a PhD candidate on the verge of becoming a doctor. I can watch Gamers Nexus for highly comprehensive breakdowns of tech products. Realistically, I can self-teach in ways I never could have 20 years ago as long as I'm responsible.
• Piracy has arguably never been easier to gain access to paywalled research papers, books, etc. There's a movement in academia to make research open-access.
• Software is moving more and more toward open-source. This gives entrenched, capitalist power structures increasingly limited control over people and opens up this knowledge to everybody.

That all being said, things are really dire because so many people really lack the basic media literacy skills to utilize these tools and avoid the ocean of shit around them.