Firstly, with deep respect, this is incredibly arrogant.
But nevertheless, you may be right about this, that only
the enlightened and educated few can discern truth from
falsity and make informed choices.

I meant it purely in a humble way, and in the spirit of recognizing my own privileges. Not as some kind of value judgement. I am nothing special by HN standards, that's for darn sure. I'm probably below average here.

But it's important to examine our own privileges.

Intelligence (while admittedly not well-represented by a single number like IQ) is more or less a lottery we win or lose at birth. Bragging about intelligence is like bragging about being tall. It's not something earned; it wouldn't make sense for anybody to ever brag about it.

Critical thinking is a skill that is a serious luxury. It relies on some combination of intelligence, time to hone the skill, access to education, access to information, and/or a serious autodidactic streak. A lot of people live lives where one or all of those is missing, often through no fault of their own.

Other things help me to separate online misinformation from information as well. I was in high school / college as the web came of age, at a time when I had the time and inclination to dive into it from the beginning.

I was born into a stable middle class household in which we could afford a computer and internet access. More privileges many do not enjoy.

All those factors were crucial. Take one away and I may well have struggled to comprehend the difference between real and fake news.

My sister is a prime example. Many of the same advantages of me, but born earlier. Missed the internet revolution. Never been comfortable with technology. Constantly falls for fake news. Is that her fault? Well, yes, ultimately. We must all be responsible for ourselves.

But it's also essentially "a well-financed misinformation industry" versus "a middle-aged woman who is technologically illiterate" and wow, that is NOT a fair fight by any measure. If we are basing the future of our society on that fight having a favorable outcome, we are really fooling ourselves.

But nevertheless, you may be right about this, that only the
enlightened and educated few can discern truth from falsity
and make informed choices.

It's not even easy for those with the intelligence and inclination. The "enemy" here is not a crazy person, dressed in rags, wandering down the street muttering that the moon is made of cheese.

The "enemy" is well-funded organizations who have serious time and money -- and sometimes state level backing -- and are devoted to pushing a mix of legitimate and fake news that takes serious effort and knowledge to separate from the real thing(s).

I see within your argument, which may not be factually wrong,
a powerful argument in favor of authoritarianism and oligarchy

I certainly don't want that. If anything I'd say my arguments point towards technocracy where we would favor experts over pure mob rule. That certainly presents its own problems though.

There are no easy answers.

A purely laissez-faire free for all absolutely does not work. We see it time and time again. Bad-faith information always utterly drowns out good-faith information, like spam emails or search results drowning out the legitimate stuff.

Solid, best-effort reporting takes time and sometimes the results are boring. Willful misinformation is orders of magnitude easier to produce.

Education and critical thinking are utterly essential. We should invest heavily in these areas. Democracy relies on them, utterly. But it is also fantasy to think everybody will become enlightened information-processors, and even those of us who are competent at it need help wading through oceans of garbage. At some point, we do need trusted providers of curation. While not ideal, it is realistic, unlike hoping that most members of society evolve into galaxy-brained autodidacts.

This is how any developed society functions. We can't all evaluate drugs and therapies, so we need the FDA. You could replace it with one or more private-sector ventures, perhaps, but at some point you would need to rely on something. We can't all make clothes or food so we trust others. We trust others to design our roads and keep them safe. If I had unlimited time and brain cells it might be nice to do these things myself, but it is not even a little bit realistic.