May the truth come to Light / Möge die Wahrheit ans Licht Kommen / Que a verdade venha à Luz / Que la verdad salga a la Luz

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Are there absolute truths or is everything just about opinion and how you feel about something. For every fact there is a counterfact and all these counterfacts and facts look identical online, which is confusing to most people.

Humans shape technology advances to their own, not-fully-noble purposes and bad actors with bad motives will thwart the best efforts of technology innovators to remedy today’s problems. Manipulative actors will use new digital tools to take advantage of Humans.

As a group, Humans are stupid.

It is inexpensive and easy for bad actors to act badly. Bad actors gain more creating fake information (both monetary and in notoriety) than they can keeping it from occurring.

Bad actors see online information as a uniquely powerful shaper of public opinion in ways that serve their economic or political interests.

These very same bad actors oppose (or subvert) technological or policy interventions or other attempts to insure the quality, and especially the misinformation.

Misinformation and hate is not like a plumbing problem you fix. It is a social condition, like crime, that you must constantly monitor and adjust to. Since as far back as the era of radio and before, as Winston Churchill said,

A lie can go around the World before the truth gets its pants on.

While propaganda and the manipulation of the public via misinformation is a tactic as old as the Human race, the speed, reach and low cost of online communication plus continuously emerging innovations will magnify the threat level significantly.

The dark side of Human nature is aided more than stifled by technology.

Bad actors can benefit socially, economically, politically by manipulating the information environment. As long as these incentives exist, bar actors will find a way to exploit them.

These benefits are not amenable to technological resolution as they are social, political and cultural in nature. Solving this problem will require larger changes in Society.

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