Trolls and misinformation: a symptom of the early internet

This is the final episode of season 1. Thanks for joining me on this journey. In this episode, we discuss a hypothesis about internet trolling and misinformation. I provide two pieces of evidence along with one personal anecdote supporting this hypothesis. These are given in the episode and are not provided here in the synopsis. Hopefully they are convincing for you. Time will tell if my hypothesis is ultimately correct.

The hypothesis is that these phenomena (trolling and misinformation) are symptoms of the early internet that will improve over time. The idea is that every new power is abused in its early years as people adjust to it, but in time people learn to use it properly. Internet access represents a brand new type of power that we’ve never had before, and every day, more and more people are getting access for the first time. They are immediately sucked into fake news websites that proliferate everywhere, and participate in and are affected by internet trolls.

As the decades go by and internet access becomes the rule rather than the exception, more people will be born with the internet as something that just exists. As this population of people born into the internet grows, the phenomena of trolling and belief in fake news will likely subside. More people will learn internet etiquette, having been taught about it from an early age, and the trolly, bullshitty corner of the internet will begin to shrink in relevance. As that happens, the best version of the internet will begin to grow in importance: the aspect of the internet that facilitates valuable contributions and learning: Wikipedia and GitHub come to mind.