Are We Living in a Post-Truth World?
As deepfakes become more difficult to detect, it’s going to get tougher to separate fact from fiction. That has deep implications for how we identify and understand truth.
Former US president Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year term. While that’s steep on any scale, the idea that politicians routinely lie to the public is not breaking news. But Trump took his relationship with reality to even shakier ground than usual. He widely dismissed unflattering media reports as fake news. He consistently hurled insults at journalists. And he still claims the 2020 US election was rigged against him.
At the same time, we’ve seen a significant increase in misinformation circulating on social media. According to the Pew Research Center, about 18 percent of American adults say social media is their primary source of political and election news. That’s more than radio (8 percent) and network TV (13 percent).
The same study also found that Americans who use social media as their primary news source are more likely to be misinformed about current events. Only 43 percent of social media users were able to correctly answer questions about current events. That’s lower than network TV (56 percent)…
