🧵 I often talk about VDA, Verification, Deliberation, Accountability, as the core functions that make democracy possible. But to understand what’s gone wrong, we need to look at how those functions have changed.
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Thought for the day: If you repost the individual thread entries, they'll end up splatted up backwards for anyone following you. Sadly, threading is not preserved, at least not on the BS app.
Excellent thread on an important subject. It has been obvious for a while (at least to those of us who remember how pre-internet news worked mostly better) that our outlets for journalism are broken. What you’ve written here goes a long way towards explaining why.
Even if it's a difficult period now, one needs to retain a degree of hope, I think. And faith in humanity. I don't believe the pretence will be possible to sustain for long. The challenge will be to be able to channel the discontent in a productive way.
The problem is, as you correctly say, that to replace them with something worthwhile will be a societal task. And those with more of the resources don't have an interest in enabling the many to think for themselves.
Fully agree that individuals need the tools to be able to do this for themselves. In a way the process you describe can be seen as at least somewhat positive as it breaks down established power structures.
The DSA refused to endorse Harris over Trump. Because of DSA refusal to support our Democratic presidential nominee, refusal to blame Hamas for the attacks on Oct 7th, and its anti-NATO stance regarding the attacks on Ukraine, being a DSA member is disqualifying https://www.dsausa.org/statements/dsa-statement-on-the-presidential-race/
AOC was the first board member of Justice Democrats, who’s openly stated purpose is to destroy the Democratic Party, and who’s Squad has frequently voted with the worst Republicans on key issues including against supporting Ukraine and the Iron Dome
I've wondered if a solution for news could be the creation of an independent board whose job would be to evaluate and certify news orgs. Although voluntary, having the certification would indicate a trustworthy info source.
In the 20th century, verification happened inside institutions, newsrooms, courts, scientific bodies. These weren’t perfect, but they followed internal rules with their own biases. And critically, they also controlled distribution. What was verified was what got seen.
IMO, this is a key point - Verification was much more centralized (and, IMO, lacked transparency). While the current information environment has essentially democratized this process, people as a whole haven't yet been adequately prepared for this - resulting in the situation you describe.
Accountability has collapsed. Law enforcement officers are not accountable to the law. Politicians are not accountable to the law (double standard) or to the people (they choose their constituents). CEOs are only accountable to a tiny number of large shareholders. Accountability, what does it mean?
That gatekeeping role is collapsing. Platforms have flattened the structure. Now, verification and distribution both happen in public, in real time, on the same networks. Information doesn’t pass through a filter before reaching us, it spreads while it’s still being debated.
The gatekeeping role is also where accountability happened. When the cost of distributing information closes to zero, the cost of not verifying it first also plummets. How to justify the investment to build a rep for verified info when all are in the same flat feed, with engagement the only metric?
Verification has been decoupled from process. Anyone can perform it. A thread, a meme, a confident voice on a podcast, all can simulate the work of verification without doing it. What looks like truth-seeking is often just performance.
I hope so, too, but it assumes a critical mass of people who care enough about what's true/real and what's not. I always assumed without really considering it that people cared about that, but the last dozen years have to make us at least question it.
Deliberation used to happen on more of a schedule. There were news cycles, debates, hearings, editorial deadlines. The pace created space, however flawed, for argument, response, and reflection. Now it all happens instantly, with no separation between thought and reaction.
And in that environment, engagement becomes validation. If a claim fits your worldview, and your community endorses it, that becomes your truth. There’s no structure to slow things down, no filter to force second thoughts.
A good non political example of that is the Anti-AI bias on Bsky. AI is dangerous, but so are computers. It's concerning that so many refuse to use AI instead of trying to make it better.
Wasn't that also true for most people even before the recent platform-enabled shift ? I mean most people were not involved in the debates but just took for granted what their figures of authority (journalists, scientists, judges, politicians) claimed after they debated.
This isn’t just about bad information. It’s about the disappearance of epistemic structure, the structures we used to build our understanding of the world. When verification and deliberation both become flattened, frictionless, and identity-driven, accountability has nowhere to land.
I think among its proponents, there's a temptation to say with the right prompt, the right tools, and the right information, a proper Verification AI might be able to outperform even a talented human in real time. At least for the moment this is FALSE. The AI are far too eager to confirm biases.
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https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-case-for-abolishing-elections/
Tech could be used to facilitate the verification and exchange of information - yet it does the opposite all too often.
There must be ways to solve for this - it appears a tractable problem.
In a world of endless and instant fake AI video and audio, someone has to verify what's real and what not.
But there's been a lot of distrust in institutions before the AI (LLMs reaaly) bubble hit.
Anti-vaxxers probs the best example.