Dear Internet, can we talk? We have an information pollution problem of epic proportions.
▻http://phillipadsmith.com/2017/07/we-have-an-information-pollution-problem.html
This is the digital equivalent of dirty carbon emissions and toxic waste being pumped into the Internet’s fragile ecosystem. Like industries that seek to externalize cost and avoid regulation, the insidious thing about information pollution is that it uses the Internet’s strengths — like openness and decentralization — against it. For each step the Internet has made toward its aspirational goals of bringing more democracy, knowledge, and civility to the world, bad actors have worked to undermine those goals for profit or power. There is a battle of epic proportions underway in the ecosystem of the Internet: profit, public relations, and politics vs. people’s trust in what they read online.