While on the magnitude of hundreds rather than thousands, we literally just had one whole town burning down, and in the same state as Pearl Harbor, no less. If that’s not enough “psychological impact” to wake the masses up, I don’t even wish to imagine what will.
The easiest and most effective solution would be to just get Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter/X to crack down harder on misinformation.
Optimally, there should even be a sort of “social reputation ranking” system in place to disincentivize online misinformation and hate speech by tying it to real-life ramifications. We sort of already have something like that for job applications, and I’m proud of that, but if we could extend the enforcement and implementation of this kind of thing to, say, transportation, real estate, or banking, that would certainly be a commendable step in the right direction. Ranted about the mask and vaccine mandates in 2020? Good luck buying that car.
Too bad an increasing and worrisome number of these platforms are being owned by right-wing shrinks. Heil Spez and Heil Musk.