> Misinformation has spread in the past too, albeit slowly.

I would argue that almost all information is "wrong" in the strict sense. Everyone has a ceiling for how detailed a model of reality they need (including moral and ethical reality). And even those weith the highest ceiling (most exact model) are simplifying in ways that others can see as "wrong".

"The earth is flat", "Earth is spherical" and "Earth is an ellipsoid" are all "wrong", technically, yet most people would be fine with the last 2.

What we have, at times, in the past been able to, is to agree on a general narrative and the core of a shared model, at least within our own extended tribe or country.

At times these world views have been diverging. This happened many times with religion, such as during the Reformation. This gave rise to severe wars and civil wars.

> Misinformation has spread in the past too, albeit slowly. The checks and balances did nothing to stop the custodians of the institutions from dismissing heliocentrism, the germ theory, or the continental drift.

These are all cases where scientism started taking over custody for many beliefs that were previously governed by religion. This did cause some friction, but not nearly as bad as during the reformation.

> And for a modern example, the checks and balances failed when the authorities shared a narrative about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

There are two aspects to this. I personally believed that the Bush administration actually believed this, and that this was simply bad intel. But if you think they were spreading misinformation on purpose, well, that means you already lost faith in the government. Which is bad if you're right, and maybe even worse if you're wrong.

> All of that was possible without today's technology.

I would argue that the paradigm that we've had in the west based on scientism and liberalism has worked relatively well, except in cases where there have been clashes with traditional religions or novel religion-like ideologies (nazism and communism). Conservatives, liberals and even social democrats shared most core beliefs, and diffences in opinion about details related to relgion or priority were possible to resolve (with some pains, of course).

Part of the reason this worked, was geographical distance. Minor disagreements don't seem quite so important if some person is 1000km away.

Now, though, it seems that technology (twitter being the worst one) forces us into groups, and even punishes those who are not faithful to the canonical beliefs of those groups.

If you're in the MAGA group and believe global warming is a problem, you will be seen as a RINO. If you're progressive (or even "WOKE") and belive that climate change is only a moderate problem (even if fully accepting the IPCC findings), you're labelled a "Climate Denier". In both cases, you may be well within the range that is compatible with the scientific consensus, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore.

And I'm not sure if there are ANY generally trusted institutions around that clearly and loudly express what the scientific consensus really is, including what the uncertainty band is.

Since most people do not have nearly the scientific literacy to interpret the IPCC findings (not to speak of the undelying science), they are left with 2nd hand interpretations, and those tend to be highly oriented towards one of the extreme "tribe-narratives", which (as far as I can tell) both are almost equally wrong.

And demagoges of both sides are excellent at explaining why the OTHER side is wrong, but they almost never why beliefs popular on their OWN side is wrong. More and more people are thinking that the other tribe members are either all stupid, liars or even evil, while they think that their own side are factually correct and morally virtous.

Twitter and Facebook have obviously been boosting this. On twitter you risk being bombarded with propaganda and hit pieces that are either inaccurate, incomplete, or in some cases completely made up.

Now, if people are making up stories already. How will that when anyone can create a video that appears to show that the opponent's champion is doing exactly what the worst conspiracy theories claim (like Hillary raping a child or Trump peeing on some prostitute, live action backup up by people you trust claiming it's all real)?

That's the stuff civil wars (or world wars) are made of.