Agreed. Instead of looking for institutional solutions, we can demonstrate the need for critical thinking and skepticism as individuals. This is a can-do solution we can start with now. The above poster's plea of, "there ought to be a law" removes the agency of the individual.
There are also serious problems with appointing fact checkers as impartial arbiters of objective truths. It is an untenable scheme. A naked appeal to authoritarianism.
> we can demonstrate the need for critical thinking
Good luck with that. Humans are not always rational and don't always act on their best interests, much less on the whole species' best interests.
If we leave saving our species to individuals, I wish the cockroaches better luck. I, personally, would bet on ants and bees, as they seem to be much better organized than us.
My alarm bells would go off if someone claimed to know what is best for the whole species.
If individuals are not rational as you say, then how would politicians, technocrats or other central planners be rational?
If an individual doesn't have the right to coerce you, how does a collective of individuals have the right to coerce you?
Individualism is the decentralization of information and decision making. It has a different failure mode. If we accept that men are fallible, then individualism allows for a competition of solutions and ideas. Humans will never be perfect. Decentralization allows us to progress and iterate faster than central planning, which has all of the same problems with what you call "irrationality".
> A politician? An private or public institution complicit n this behaviour?
Elected politicians are representatives of their people. If people are voting on politicians complicit with institutions, private or public, engaged in this behavior, then it's an example of this issue.
Trump has shown us how frighteningly little of American democracy is kept together by anything more than decorum. If politicians remain popular while being shameless, there isn't much your democracy can do to protect itself.
I can say that the same (rapid institutional degradation) is happening in Brazil, the country I grew up in. In 2016 an elected president was removed from power based on a campaign of disinformation that started before the election (but failed to prevent her re-election) that ended in accusations of unlawful accounting maneuvers that, in the end (well after the impeachment), were considered legal by a court. The disinformation campaign continues and was responsible for the election of a cartoon fascist that is still supported by a third of the population. Newspapers report 3 to 5 lies every day. Last one is recommending a chemical castration drug as a COVID treatment.
We need institutions that more robustly defend ourselves from disinformation campaigns.
