I think fake news is fine. For the average person, life is way too boring and predictable. There needs to be more instability, more opportunities, less continuity. Fake news does that, it makes the system and the narrative of society uncontrollable and this is exactly what people need. We just need more different mediums through which to spread news. The alternative is an information dictatorship.
Before, we were led by false centralized narratives filtered by an elite. Now at least we have the potential to find the real truth because it's all out there. It doesn't destroy critical thinking, it's the opposite, it makes critical thinking indispensable because each individual must do the work themselves.
I think the problem is not fake news, the problem is that people got used to believing all the BS from authorities; they were trained to, so now they are easily fooled. Eventually, exposure to fake news will untrain us and force us to actually think for ourselves.
IMO the discussion around fake news serves the interests of the elite. They don't want people to think for themselves.
You're very optimistic to think that by destroying the notion of "gatekeepers of truth", people will simply think critically for themselves.
I think most people either don't know how, don't care enough, or have enough time to think long and hard about every subject. I'd wager most people rather are OK with outsourcing critical thinking on most matters to authority figures of some kind. So when people are no longer capable of recognizing legitimate sources of truth, they likely gravitate towards whatever figure aligns with their biases & beliefs.
Yes there are problems with having gatekeepers of any kind, but I'd rather have that then a world where some random moron spouting conspiracy theories is taken seriously by too many people.
On subjects that they don't understand but which affect them, I think it's better if non-experts follow their own gut instinct rather than to defer thinking to someone that they don't know who supposedly understands the subject. Human elites are liars and cheaters, the so-called expert is more likely to be a skilled con artist than a skilled expert. I trust that even so-called morons have decent common sense. Probably better than a lot of elites even.
The existence of misinformation doesn't mean that the truth is out there, it just means that there is incorrect information being consumed and probably accepted by some portion of the population.
Also, I agree that fake news makes critical thinking indispensable, but it also does nothing to improve one's critical thinking skills, which is one of the reasons it's dangerous.
Before, we were led by false centralized narratives filtered by an elite. Now at least we have the potential to find the real truth because it's all out there. It doesn't destroy critical thinking, it's the opposite, it makes critical thinking indispensable because each individual must do the work themselves.
I think the problem is not fake news, the problem is that people got used to believing all the BS from authorities; they were trained to, so now they are easily fooled. Eventually, exposure to fake news will untrain us and force us to actually think for ourselves.
IMO the discussion around fake news serves the interests of the elite. They don't want people to think for themselves.