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Verify it against what? Additional information of dubious quality? Case in point, the whole "vaccines cause autism" thing. That finding was published by Andrew Wakefield in Lancet and cited everywhere. Only thing is that is was debunked almost immediately, but people kept citing the publication.
My point being that few people have the gumption to check sources, and if they do, fewer still are going to keep tabs on them more than once, or verify the validity against... yet additional sources. Every step in the process has the end user trying to determine if what they are reading is true, against other information they don't know is true.
My point is that misinformation has always been here. This isn't something new. In the past you had to do actual research to verify if something was true, half-truth, or completely untrue. Now you can easily find information. And compared to researching something in a library, easily verify it.
This could be a generational thing but it's so incredibly easy to disprove something now. If you Google, "do vaccines cause autism" in less than a quarter of a second Google gives you government websites, scholarly articles, links to university studies, etc. It's easier now than ever before to find and verify good information. And I'm not trying to be dismissive but I don't think anyone will convince me otherwise any time soon.
It's a little out of order, but I just wanted to mention that I don't disagree with you, and I don't find your tone dismissive at all! Further, I have no intention of convincing anyone of anything specifically, just raising points of interest. We're just having a fun little back and forth!
Misinformation and falsehoods are as old as time, absolutely. What is new is the lack of trust in the authoritative bodies that would typically provide that ballast of truth, to measure against. People distrust the government (and if what I've read about the history of US politics is true, there might be something to that). They don't typically associate government information with "good" information as they would have in the past. Even official publications are not immune, as per my previous example with vaccinations. Lastly, I believe you and I have the ability to search something and find a suitable result to cut through bad information; at least better than most. Passing the "smell test", if you will. We take that for granted. The vast majority don't realize how to find information effectively. They may search "vaccines cause autism" as a question, but that may very well return many fringe articles with that exact string in it, providing validity to the statement where none was before.
Basically, the game is rigged. We've figured out how to navigate those waters with a reasonable amount of success, but it's a skill we've invested in. Most people do not possess that, and are unwilling to acquire it (those same people that will put in a support ticket before trying literally anything to resolve a technical issue they may be encountering). For them, the information bounty we are enjoying is a minefield of confusion.