An Insane Amount is Expected of American Voters
I’m stressed. I’m overloaded with information. I’m refreshing X every six minutes like democracy depends on it. And I’m not alone. If I were, there wouldn’t be new information every time I reloaded the app.
This has been a particularly crazy week in politics, but it’s far from the first time I’m swamped. The amount Americans are expected to know in order to be “good” citizens has become overwhelming. Somehow, we’re all supposed to be one-person fact-checkers misinformation-spotters nutrition-experts microplastics-researchers solar-panel-installers doomsday-preppers infectious-disease-experts just to survive. And that’s just civic responsibilities; there are also our responsibilities we have to our family, friends, employers etc.
As another election approaches, I’m particularly frustrated with the amount of personal fact-checking voters are expected to do if they want to stay informed. It would require a PhD in journalism to read news in a way that distinguishes the truth from misinformation. X now sells blue checkmarks (which were never a perfect system, but at least stopped bad actors from impersonating NPR, for example), and none of the popular social media platforms have much in the way of content moderation. Facebook (including Instagram and Threads) has decided to solve the problem of misinformation by downplaying all political content, which doesn’t solve the problem and, in fact, introduces new risks – for example, that accurate information can’t reach people, or that no one who doesn’t already have a platform could run for office, which will keep power concentrated. Not to mention AI, which has gotten so good that my old trick of looking to see if anyone in the photo has six fingers doesn’t even work anymore. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decision gave social media companies more free speech rights, which means they may have even less incentive to clean up misinformation on their sites.
And so many of the credible sources are behind paywalls, which I understand, but I also understand a person’s unwillingness to pay $3.99/month for 78 things. I would argue that accurate information is a public good, and therefore should be supported whether or not the articles get clicks (a better model would probably be something like the BBC).
But let’s say I stay off social media and I do pay the $3.99 (times 78), just to ensure I’m only getting 100% fact-checked information. Even on credible sites, the amount of content paid for by brands is absurd. Consider the years-long conspiracy to convince people red wine was healthy. You can show almost anything with statistics, so a bad-faith actor can present technically true facts without conveying accurate information. This means that a news consumer must find out who’s funding the studies they’re reading about. We’re talking about a substantial time commitment just to get through one article.
And this has been true-ish for years. Misinformation didn’t begin with social media, or even AI, although both of those have expedited it. But I couldn’t help but find myself particularly frustrated while watching last week’s debate. Trump did nothing but lie. The moderators did very little fact-checking, and Biden arguably did even less (or maybe he did more, but he underperformed the amount he should have done by a wider margin). For a viewer to learn anything from the debates (other than that we’re … um … fucked), they would have to be one-person-fact-checking machine. Or following along on some credible news outlets live feed, which would have made it impossible to pay attention to the debate. And now, to make matters worse, we’re told the future of democracy is at stake. That it’s our civic duty to decipher accurate information amidst all the chaos, or else.
Maybe you think I’m complaining too much, and maybe I am. It’s something I’ve been known to do. So what would be a reasonable expectation of the American voter? Well, I don’t think the average American voter should have to be smarter and better-informed than our elected officials. We’re all expected to know so much, when – after Thursday, and also, before – our sincerest hope for the person seeking the highest office in the land is that they be able to form a complete sentence. It’s just asking too much.
It’s not just that it’s unfair to expect so much of American voters; it’s that it’s unlikely. And the stakes could not be higher because democracy actually is on the line (see also: Monday’s SCOTUS decision). We’re heading into November with millions of people doing the best they can with busy schedules and imperfect information. And to a viewer who watched last week’s debate with no personal fact-checking apparatus, with a prior conception of the candidates based on deep fakes and cheap-fakes that are impossible to weed out, let me ask – who do you think came off as more appealing?
