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I think there was a sort of techno-utopianism in the aughts that the hip new startups will solve all the world's problems. People will be educated and not fall

I think there was a sort of techno-utopianism in the aughts that the hip new startups will solve all the world's problems. People will be educated and not fall for disinformation with wikipedia and google at their fingertips. People will discover the wonders of democracy and free speech with facebook and rise against oppressive governments. These were obviously overly optimistic projections. Also, the rise of outrage porn makes it much easier for people to come to the conclusion that "the system" is horribly broken and needs to be changed (for almost any "system" that we speak of, government or capitalism, or youtube, literally anything)

Zak 8y ago
I think there's a tendency to discount the partial successes, perhaps because they make the failures yet more shocking. I can fact-check most things I read in seconds, yet there's a still-growing anti-vaccine movement. While the mechanisms promised are there and work great at an individual level, that's not always the case at a national, regional, or global scale. And now the popular hope seems to be that the wonders of democracy can temper the excesses that came with these partially successful solutions. It is my fear that this hope is also irrationally optimistic, and that regulation will lead to politicians and bureaucrats deciding what is true at scale for their own benefit.