> Now everyone has it, there can be far more bubbles.
Yeah, I feel like this is the issue. I've heard the theory that in the past, every village had a village idiot. The internet has enabled all these village idiots to find each other and to broadcast their idiocies. They feel strengthened in finding like-minded people and feel vindicated in their beliefs.
Due to the size of the group and how vocal they are, they're now also pulling in people who might have previously ignored the village idiot because everyone else did.
I've heard the effect of internet compared to the effect of the printing press.
For the people on the other side of the curve from the village idiot that was true. Before the internet we (on HN I think most of us are on that side of the curve justifying the use of "we" here) had libraries and we had elaborate systems for indexing and searching [1] and providing notification of new information in our areas of interest.
We could do then most of what we now do on the internet as far as getting and processing information is concerned, just slower and we usually had to be fully clothed while doing it.
Like the printing press, what the internet did for us was make it so we could get that information faster, cheaper, and we could do it from home in whatever state of undress suited us.
For people on the village idiot side of the curve, the invention of the internet was not like invention of the printing press.
It was like the discovery of fire.
[1] A good example is a law library. Besides the books that contained the chronological record of cases and decisions from a given court, we had books that organized those cases by topic, books that provided summaries of the key legal points of each case, organized by topic, books that provided cross references for each case showing what later cases cited it, which points of the case they cited it for, and whether those citations were agreeing with it or overruling it.
Notably, the printing press didn't immediately make good knowledge more accessible. A press was a very expensive, risky investment, and so was the typesetting of any particular content. The first killer apps were indulgences and polemic pamphlets. So basically a money racket and influencer content. Not much has changed.
Could you please expand upon how it was like the 'discovery of fire'? There are many ways to interpret this, and I'm not certain I know what you are saying.
Giving fire to a society that does not have it greatly increases their power and efficiency to a much greater extent than does giving the printing press to a society that not have it.
So what I'm saying is that while the invention of the internet was a big change to everyone, for those on the other half of the curve from the village idiots it was a change that let them do things they were already doing but faster and more efficiently (an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary step, much like the Gutenberg's printing press was to 15th century Europe), but for those down in village idiot territory it allowed them to do things with information that they had not been able to do before such as large scale collaboration (a revolutionary change rather than an evolutionary change, much like the discovery of fire was for early humans.
The "peer to peer idiot networking and amplification" effect you mention is real but it's dangerous, or at least wildly inaccurate, to explain the rise of our "disinformation society" by dismissing the culprits as "idiots." Many of them are, but...
Look at the politicians and others pushing blatant disinformation and profiting from it. They are doing this with a great degree of skillful malice. Nobody listens to actual idiots; they want to emulate and follow the successful/powerful people who are savvy enough to hone their message and their image.
Look at the people swallowing these lies. Many of them are generally intelligent and/or successful people. Many Trump supporters are quite successful and affluent. However, their faith in actual academics, experts, and traditional institutions has been shattered, leaving uniquely susceptible to malignant influences who are eager to fill this "trust vacuum."
Yeah, I feel like this is the issue. I've heard the theory that in the past, every village had a village idiot. The internet has enabled all these village idiots to find each other and to broadcast their idiocies. They feel strengthened in finding like-minded people and feel vindicated in their beliefs.
Due to the size of the group and how vocal they are, they're now also pulling in people who might have previously ignored the village idiot because everyone else did.