Misinformation Has an Advantage Over Reality

Philip Bump: “All of the checks our culture has on misinformation work too slowly to be effective. Mark Twain’s well-worn adage about lies traveling halfway around the world was born in an era where getting halfway around the world took a few days. Now everything is faster, burrows deeper, spreads more widely than Twain could have imagined. But our processes for containing or counteracting false information haven’t changed much at all. It’s fighting the coronavirus with leeches.”

“It has been a particularly bad summer for some of the worst purveyors of misinformation polluting American politics.”