We are more conscious than ever of the harms of misinformation for the common good. This concern is driven by a widespread understanding of misinformation as a public disease in need of an urgent cure. Against this picture, philosopher Daniel Williams argues that misinformation is often a symptom of a deeper public malaise -- and that debunking and censorship won't be the magic bullet that we're hoping for.

Since the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, we have been living through an unprecedented societal panic about misinformation. Poll after poll demonstrates that the general public is highly fearful of fake news and misleading content, a concern which is widely shared among academics, journalists, and policymakers.

This panic is driven by the narrative that misinformation is a kind of societal disease. Sometimes this metaphor is explicit, as with the World Health Organisation’s claim that we are living through an “infodemic” and influential research that likens misinformation to a contagious virus, but it also motivates the common diagnosis that misinformation lies at the root of many societal ills. In this analysis, ordinary individuals are routinely sucked into online rabbit holes that transform them into rabid conspiracy theorists, and misinformation is the driving force behind everything from vaccine scepticism to support for right-wing demagogues.