Who Gets to Decide What Are Facts, Opinions and Lies Online? | Opinion [Video]

In September, a survey by Adobe found that 94 percent of Americans are concerned that misinformation will impact the imminent presidential election. Conspiracy theories in recent weeks regarding Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, abound across social media platforms.

At the same time, a new Pew Research survey found that more than half of all Americans now get their news from social media. This is a recipe for a democracy breakdown.

As one of the early founders of social networking, I’ve thought a lot about social media’s role and responsibility when it comes to misinformation. In social media’s beginnings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no monitoring for misinformation or “fact-checking” users’ posts.

Perhaps critical thinking skills were better back then because we …