In this new world, the burden of discerning what is true or false falls on each of us individually. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have not fully tried to correct harmful falsehoods on their platforms. Meta’s small programs, such as Community Notes, a way for people to add more context to confusing and misleading posts, or YouTube links to vetted information, play a small yet inconsequential role in spreading mis-, dis-, and mal-information. 

So the responsibility falls to us — as parents, friends, colleagues and, above all, as citizens — to develop the skills needed to navigate a highly polluted information ecosystem. 

Since the Trump administration took office in January 2025, we’ve seen increased attacks on our democratic systems and a failure by Congress to intervene. This came to a head in early April, when the president defied a Supreme Court order to return the wrongfully deported Marylander Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.