I happened to catch a couple minutes of a Saturday night MSNBC program where the host and some guests were talking about the TikTok kerfuffle. The host mentioned at one point that he trusted Americans to make good choices and wise decisions and I got to thinking about how difficult that can be when the information we receive is sometimes all over the map.
How do we actually make informed decisions when there’s so much noise, so many conflicting and changing reports and evolving opinions? One minute the Chinese are blatantly spying on us, the next minute pundits are wondering why we’re not paying closer attention to domestic social media outlets like Facebook, etc., who extract more sensitive data from users than the Chinese, apparently. One possible reponse to this is Facebook is a domestic actor and somehow less threatening, while China is considered an adversary who’s competing with us for World #1 Superpower status.
Anyway, what are we supposed to do with all these opinions? Who’s sharing the critical and useful information? On what do we base our “good” and “wise” decisions?
3 Cents' 