We have tried teaching people not to believe everything they read on the internet already. We need solutions that actually work.
It's wishful thinking at best to believe that Twitter replies can effectively refute arguments. They don't establish public dialog unless the OP retweets the responses. You can't call it a dialogue if, effectively, there's only one person talking. Even simple refutations fail on Twitter.
"We can't fact check one person because it'd be hard to do the same for a large number of people" is classic perfect-as-enemy-of-good. We get huge bang-for-buck by handling some obvious outliers and known bad actors, and that's worth doing.
What western democracies really need is an entire government segment dedicated to fact-checking. We could call it the "Department of Truth" (or "Ministry of Truth" in UK) and it would be responsible for labeling things on social media as true or false using little fact checker badges.
We literally have agencies that enforce degrees of truthfulness today, such as the FDA, FCC, and FTC. Our legal system is explicitly designed around determining degrees of truth in the courts.
So when 'fact checkers' end up with a right-wing bias will that still seem prudent? History is full of people in power, expanding their powers only to see their opposition use them more effectively against them.
It's wishful thinking at best to believe that Twitter replies can effectively refute arguments. They don't establish public dialog unless the OP retweets the responses. You can't call it a dialogue if, effectively, there's only one person talking. Even simple refutations fail on Twitter.
"We can't fact check one person because it'd be hard to do the same for a large number of people" is classic perfect-as-enemy-of-good. We get huge bang-for-buck by handling some obvious outliers and known bad actors, and that's worth doing.