Musk and friends are smothering the Internet’s truth seekers

NOT long after Hurricane Helene wrought destruction across the southern US, a more bewildering storm blew through: Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) bumped up against angry residents and armed militia in Tennessee and North Carolina, people who had been riled up by rumours that the officials were there to take their homes. Fema evacuated its teams, leaving behind communities that desperately needed help.

A cursory search of X (formerly Twitter) brought up several viral videos suggesting that Fema was bulldozing bodies under the rubble, but press reports such as one in the Washington Post were unclear about exactly where and how the rumours were spreading. They were just… spreading. That posed something even more troubling: How could you hold online platforms accountable for conspiracy theories if you didn’t know where they were being shared?

The answer is “you can’t”, because the people studying the flow of disinformation are being sued by those who seem to benefit from the spread of “alternative facts”.