But, overall, it has the effect of slowly winnowing out nonsense, misinformation, and other low value stuff. Meanwhile, information that continues to be useful

But, overall, it has the effect of slowly winnowing out nonsense, misinformation, and other low value stuff. Meanwhile, information that continues to be useful continues to be worth the effort of repeating Unfortunately, in some (many?) cases the very fact some "information" exists is the "usefulness", independent of the usefulness/accuracy of the information itself. The unsubstantiated "claim" of crime being up can result in more funding for police, even if the claim is false. There are people profiting from the increase in police spending, they don't care if the means to obtain that are true or not. Over the long term, the least-expended-energy state, accepting the truth, will win out, but people have some incentive/motivation to avoid that in the shorter term.