Instead of active malice to rewrite the truth, can't this just be explained by "people forget over time as new information overwrites old"? Maybe one model for

Instead of active malice to rewrite the truth, can't this just be explained by "people forget over time as new information overwrites old"? Maybe one model for our attention spans is a FIFO queue, organized per topic. That model can't always work, however - we also know that people's first impressions will continue to be strongly held for quite a bit of time. EG, once a news story is published, retractions lack the same impact. What other possible explanations are there? I think it's worth considering alternatives, as it seems clear there are multiple relevant ways of looking at the problem.