Of information viruses

As long as anyone can write anything, there are obviously a lot of overflows. We often talk about “fake news” and “hate speech”. While these phenomena are not new, the Internet has brought a new dimension to them: a much broader scope, and an illusion of anonymity that disinhibits speech.

In response, the public authorities generally prefer the legislative response: prohibit certain statements, punish the guilty parties. This type of response poses two democratic problems:

• By protecting the population in this way, it is infantilised: in a world of filtered information, the sense of criticism is blunted, and the whole system becomes vulnerable to accidental misinformation.
• Once the means of censorship have been put in place and accepted, the government can readily silence any controversial comment, even legitimate ones, under the guise of maintaining public order.

One alternative lies in education to the critical sense of the individual, in order to be able to rely on citizens in exercising their judgment between truth and fallacy, and to make them insensitive to hate speech.

Education is the only way to preserve a true democracy of free and enlightened citizens, not necessarily agreeing, but able to debate. “Violence is the last refuge of incompetence”, so if we want to avoid violence, let’s upgrade our skills.

Illustration in this short video.

• Democracy
• Education
• Information