In 2020, Disinformation Broke the US

An “infodemic” afflicted the year 2020. You might think the pandemic would unite people, but Americans were at each other’s throats over basic scientific truths. Amid the fight, as Jane Lytvynenko reports in Buzzfeed, social media outlets profited from the viral spread of disinformation. The manipulation machine spewed lies about diseases and vaccines, about Black Lives Matter protests and the US election’s legitimacy. Disinformation’s corrosive impact isn’t going away, and no clear path for combating it seems apparent, but the problem is at least partially the responsibility of social media companies.