Canadian Politics Today

The democratization of information seems to have failed, and instead of enlightening us is dumbing us down.

I argued over ten years ago that the internet provides us with too much information. People mostly aren’t equipped to navigate it all, so they double down on what they want to believe and dig in. I claimed that this would lead to even deeper partisan divisions, but it has become so much worse than I imagined. In my naïveté, I never imagined a state actor taking advantage of this and intentionally sowing discord in this environment. It seems so obvious now. Why wouldn’t Russia use this to their advantage, namely by destabilizing the political and economic relationships within and between the nations that keep them in check.