Let’s say someone from the U.S. is engaged in an online debate/conversation with someone who claims to also be from the U.S. It turns out the other person is from a foreign country whose part of a larger effort to convince Americans that a particular side of an issue has more supporters than there actually are. Now imagine this takes place on a social media scale and all of a sudden people have a perception of reality that is fabricated because they see all these supporters who are planted and don’t actually exist. Bots can easily fill this role as well. Tensions rise and things start to break down.

I’m curious what can be done about this. It seems the reactionary measure taken, especially by authoritarian governments, is mass censorship to limit the influx of dissenting opinions. In a “democracy” this is more difficult, but that doesn’t mean the issue should be ignored. Do people simply need to be more educated to realize just because they see a trend online, it doesn’t mean that it exists on a larger scale within reality? Curious to what all your thoughts are.