Similarly, it's also worth noting that the means of verifying a story or claim weren't widely available for a long time either. Seriously, go back to before pho

Similarly, it's also worth noting that the means of verifying a story or claim weren't widely available for a long time either. Seriously, go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so. How did you verify any claims at all? You usually just took people's word for it, or assumed their writings/paintings/memories were accurate. Unless you had the means to actively verify a claim yourself and the claim was about something you still could verify (aka the people involved weren't dead and the organisations and places there still existed), you never really could be sure. And the same sort of setup goes for other forms of evidence too. Audio evidence, video evidence, even things vital to crime solving now like fingerprinting and DNA testing are all new in the greater scheme of things. For most of human civilisation, being at least somewhat unsure of what's true and what isn't has been the norm, and the time periods where forms of evidence were easy to obtain and hard to fake few and far between. So yeah, it's definitely like a reset back to the olden days, and the challenges are certainly more about how to deal with informed democracy becoming an illusion again.