Arbiters of Truth

The dumbest red herring

Mrs. Merriam Webster, arbiter of truth

I’ve written two columns about misinformation recently, one about Joe Rogan and Spotify and one about Substack and what constitutes trustworthy behavior, and in both cases have suggested that publishers make editorial choices, which should be self-evident and uncontroversial because that’s what publishers do by definition, but for people who are fine with misinformation, and in fact, want more of it because only the misinformation confirms their priors, this is apparently an outrageous suggestion.

Case in point, Edgar here:

Edgar here is not the only person who’s said this sort of thing, but since it’s a recurring objection from right wingers in my timeline, I’m gonna pick on him.

First, everyone uses institutions and people to decide what is truth. No one makes those decisions in a vacuum. Why? Because as individuals, we are not experts on everything. Other people have knowledge and information we do not and in some cases cannot know. We use knowledge sources and heuristics to triangulate on what is true, and those knowledge sources…