🧵 THREAD: Why the Cato Institute’s new paper on “misinformation panic” is dangerously wrong, and why it completely misunderstands the real crisis we face. www.cato.org/policy-analy...
Replies
Seems a foundational error to characterize it as a “misunderstanding.”
jun 28, 2025, 4:03 am • 2 0 • view
Well it is the Cato Institute.🤷🏽♂️
jun 27, 2025, 1:00 pm • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 8:48 am • 2 0 • view
How can you be a person who is alive and reach the conclusion that the absolute avalanche of scams and misinformation online is... fine actually? How??
jun 27, 2025, 11:13 am • 4 0 • view
I should have replied to this thread rather than quote posting... bsky.app/profile/aste...
jul 8, 2025, 11:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Misunderstands? Or dis-understands?
jun 27, 2025, 8:51 am • 0 0 • view
Ask yourself, is what I am thinking about a verifiable fact or an opinion. If it's a fact, how directly related to you is it. If it is directly related to you give it high priority. If it is an opinion, is it your opinion or someone else's opinion.
jun 27, 2025, 8:44 pm • 0 0 • view
They are eating the cats, they are eating the dogs.
jun 27, 2025, 8:38 pm • 2 0 • view
The misinformation is all about controlling the information so people can't tell it's false information. Tech became overvalued because of fake accounts.
jun 27, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
This article is not pointing out that AI, robots, and foreign and fake accounts are the biggest source of brainwashing propaganda misinformation. Because people's core belief system was created by using their imagination playing with toys people don't know they do not have control of their mind
jun 27, 2025, 8:32 pm • 1 0 • view
@noupside.bsky.social
jun 27, 2025, 7:14 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah I’ve written the same response to the same libertarian arguments for years now. Here’s one from this week. Had a word count so it keeps the focus on response but: lawliberty.org/content-mode...
jun 27, 2025, 11:25 am • 85 25 • view
Great article, as usual. Thank you for sharing it.
jun 27, 2025, 11:37 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jun 28, 2025, 4:54 pm • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 11:08 am • 1 0 • view
Feels like this paper from Cato intentionally confuses the terms. This meme clears it all out😉👇
jun 27, 2025, 9:20 am • 38 6 • view
That’s the same difference as a liar versus someone who “misspoke”
jun 27, 2025, 9:23 am • 6 0 • view
Or how we have tried to sanitize "hungry children" with "food insecurity"...... Just more semantics to avoid reality..
jun 27, 2025, 9:47 am • 3 1 • view
I expected you would notice the "feels" too. bsky.app/profile/jpet...
jun 27, 2025, 10:09 pm • 2 0 • view
tldr - "This 'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Tucker Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary'"
jun 27, 2025, 8:44 am • 0 0 • view
I’m sure the free market will solve this in some libertarian fantasy world.
jun 27, 2025, 3:59 pm • 1 0 • view
Are they misunderstanding or taking part in spreading more misinformation? Just seems that at some point, we can stop giving organizations like Cato, and their employees, any benefit of the doubt.
jun 27, 2025, 10:31 am • 6 0 • view
And that point was 1977, when it was founded by Charles Koch.
jun 27, 2025, 11:03 am • 8 0 • view
The Cato paper is missing the information, that the US government itself became a main source of disinformation spreading.
jun 27, 2025, 8:37 am • 1 0 • view
Worth reading and forwarding. Thank you ! 🙏
jun 27, 2025, 8:40 am • 1 0 • view
There are no words. So now it’s the disinformation over misinformation…
jun 27, 2025, 10:50 am • 2 0 • view
In other news, rain is wet. We are talking about the Cato Institute. They’re known for being pompous morons.
jun 27, 2025, 11:17 am • 1 0 • view
It’s the Cato Institute. Do they misunderstand it, or do they deliberately misrepresent this crisis?
jun 27, 2025, 8:11 am • 2 0 • view
It may be filtered through their own assumptions and biases.
jun 27, 2025, 8:13 am • 3 0 • view
Maybe. Or maybe your assessment is too kind.
jun 27, 2025, 8:32 am • 3 0 • view
"The Misleading Panic over Misinformation" says Institute at the helm of misinformation
jun 27, 2025, 10:57 am • 2 0 • view
A truly excellent summary of your thinking, thanks a lot! I also really wonder how to spread this message, we are in desperate need of it being heard.
jun 27, 2025, 10:02 am • 8 1 • view
Subvert the “firehose of disinformation” by using similar tactics to disseminate truths.
jun 28, 2025, 8:31 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 1:50 pm • 1 0 • view
The Cato institute was created by the Koch brothers the undermine Democracy
jun 27, 2025, 12:04 pm • 10 0 • view
Horrifying. I’m still having to walk folks thru the impact of mis and disinfo. The presumption being that there isn’t really much impact…
jul 3, 2025, 6:34 pm • 2 0 • view
📌📌
jun 27, 2025, 3:44 pm • 0 0 • view
@unroll.skywriter.blue
jun 28, 2025, 4:51 am • 0 0 • view
The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:2whlowi5jjjqrdrrj4lxh2lx/post/3lsl2fpxyk22e.
jun 28, 2025, 4:52 am • 0 0 • view
@skyview.social Unroll please
jul 3, 2025, 4:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Thanks for this clear thinking.
jun 30, 2025, 11:17 am • 0 0 • view
They deliberately put out misleading information. It’s their job unfortunately. So of course they try to obscure their own deliberate misinformation.
jun 27, 2025, 2:12 pm • 1 0 • view
People care what the Cato has to say?
jun 28, 2025, 12:57 am • 0 0 • view
ALWAYS check your references…
jun 27, 2025, 9:23 am • 0 0 • view
@ducugavril.nafoforum.org 👀
jun 27, 2025, 7:21 am • 2 0 • view
@unroll.skywriter.blue unroll pls
jun 27, 2025, 8:43 am • 0 0 • view
The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:2whlowi5jjjqrdrrj4lxh2lx/post/3lsl2fpxyk22e.
jun 27, 2025, 8:43 am • 1 0 • view
Deliberately wrong. They want fudge de definition so regulation is impossible.
jun 27, 2025, 12:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Half the article explains how little we know and how complicated it is The first recommendation: Cancel all related research The second: Make it illegal for representatives to support related research A bias: so many free speech advocates are assholes that get joy from yelling people down
jun 27, 2025, 8:53 pm • 1 0 • view
Their use of "jawboning" and not defining it marks their intended audience. (That was never in question really, but I think it's an interesting lapse for a piece intended to look like the view should be common.) I'd never heard it but a quick search seems to show a pretty large bias in usage
jun 27, 2025, 9:03 pm • 1 0 • view
And Jim Jordan, Taibbi, Elon et al basically tried that, and there were real harms done, and when you’re at the mercy of funding, even their fucked-up, bumbling efforts hurt us.
jun 28, 2025, 8:26 am • 0 0 • view
“Propaganda” belongs in this discussion - when misinfo, disinfo and malinfo are harnessed together deliberately for a purpose. Successful propaganda has its own playbook: - Start with truth and distort it (malinfo) - Repeat outright disinfo claims relentlessly - Vilify alternative info sources
jun 27, 2025, 11:23 am • 3 0 • view
ALL of this - YES!
jun 28, 2025, 4:44 am • 0 0 • view
@visualglitch91.com
jun 27, 2025, 12:38 pm • 0 0 • view
"The vision of the Cato Institute is a free and open society in which liberty allows every individual to pursue a life of prosperity and meaning in peace." cheirinho de ancap, já não deviam esperar nada de bom dai mesmo
jun 27, 2025, 1:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Uhum, total esvaziamento
jun 28, 2025, 11:38 am • 0 0 • view
I don't know if they're still global warming denialists, but it's hilarious for them to warn of disinformation
jun 27, 2025, 10:58 am • 4 0 • view
Obviously a purveyor of misinformation is going to tell you not to worry about misinformation.
jul 3, 2025, 4:39 pm • 6 0 • view
Obviously And Rupert Murdoch is still able to call his cable program Fox "News" without any disclaimer.
jul 3, 2025, 5:08 pm • 1 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 9:46 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 8:19 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 3:16 pm • 0 0 • view
”Misunderstands”
jun 28, 2025, 9:11 am • 0 0 • view
Our ability to make decisions hinges on accurately interpreting accurate information.
jun 27, 2025, 1:39 pm • 0 0 • view
The guy who wrote it worked for Facebook for 4 years. The end.
jun 27, 2025, 9:18 am • 8 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 9:15 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 8:18 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 7:24 am • 1 0 • view
misinformation is how they make their money.
jun 27, 2025, 7:35 am • 2 0 • view
Not misinformation. They know they are lying. Disinformation.
jun 27, 2025, 12:09 pm • 1 0 • view
Because the fucking CATO is probably full of #GrandOldPerverts who are terrified of the #kompromat #BRICS & #Trump’s #intelligenceservices gave on them “ … doesn’t exist anymore!” A Mob B Klan C Extortion D Vampires
jun 27, 2025, 12:13 pm • 1 0 • view
Disinformers spreading disinformation about disinformation
jun 27, 2025, 7:39 am • 6 0 • view
Interesting side note about recent Cato happenings. They give an award every year "Milton Friedman Prize" to somebody who significantly "advances freedom". In 2025 The Cato Institute, which is funded by the Koch political machine, gave to award to Charles Koch. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_In....
jun 27, 2025, 10:51 am • 13 2 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 7:47 am • 1 0 • view
Great thread, 🙏
jun 27, 2025, 9:07 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jun 29, 2025, 9:31 pm • 0 0 • view
Isn't CATO just part of a network of shady organizations and helpful in project 2025? The Background reads awful. (Sorry, this Database is in German language)
jun 27, 2025, 7:15 am • 3 0 • view
They detest what Trump is doing. Which doesn't mean they can't be helping Project2025. But I doubt it.
jun 27, 2025, 8:09 am • 1 0 • view
I saw one contribution, but i don't know if this list ist complete. I know that there is a dissent between different tastes of disaster capitalism.
jun 27, 2025, 8:38 am • 1 0 • view
I despised ChatGPT until I started using it - yesterday. It is amazing.
jun 27, 2025, 8:44 am • 0 0 • view
We’ve entered the Brunnerverse.
jun 27, 2025, 7:02 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jun 28, 2025, 3:41 am • 0 0 • view
Metamisinformation 🤯
jun 28, 2025, 5:23 am • 1 0 • view
It’s bad faith, not sincere misunderstanding.
jun 27, 2025, 3:49 pm • 2 0 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 6:58 am • 1 0 • view
Cato Institute is a propaganda outlet, pure and simple.
jun 27, 2025, 11:56 am • 1 0 • view
Also the expression 'fact-checking' is a lie. Statements can be checked, facts cannot. Worse, fact-checkers are self-declared authorities. Science is opposed to lies and authorities. All statements in science can be doubted and checked. By everybody. Including you.
jun 27, 2025, 7:17 pm • 0 0 • view
📌. 🔔😺EH🧵250627 ⚙️ ddex cato
jun 27, 2025, 10:07 am • 0 0 • view
They understand COMPLETELY- They ARE pouring it out now
jun 27, 2025, 10:01 am • 1 0 • view
Maybe the Cato Institute should have watched Dominic Cummings presentation about how he ran the brexit campaign www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ut2...
jun 27, 2025, 11:08 am • 1 0 • view
Cato? The people who misinformed the public about climate change? They're just like the people who insisted Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine so please don't prepare.
jun 27, 2025, 3:10 pm • 7 0 • view
The Cato article is classic gaslighting, not surprising from a Koch founded and funded fascist organization.
jun 27, 2025, 3:16 pm • 5 0 • view
Cato Institute, organization denying/downplaying climate change founded by one of Koch brothers, the oil billionaires? Well, no surprise they downplay the threat of misinformation, being one of actors spreading it.
jun 27, 2025, 7:35 am • 14 1 • view
Eliot, I find your threads / videos on disordered discourse+ v informative and thought-provoking. Please keep going 👍🏻👌🏻🙏🏻
jun 27, 2025, 7:22 am • 3 0 • view
Especially Gaza Palestine - russian UN misinformations
jun 27, 2025, 9:40 am • 3 0 • view
HOLY FUCK. 2 MASSIVELY WRONG statements, IN THE FIRST 2 bullet points!!!
jun 27, 2025, 7:10 am • 3 0 • view
Cato was set up to spread misinformation, it’s not surprising they hold this view.
jun 27, 2025, 7:19 am • 9 0 • view
The Cato Institute just published a long paper arguing that the panic around “misinformation” is overblown, politicised, and harmful to free speech. It’s slick, readable, and fundamentally misleading. Here’s why.
jun 27, 2025, 6:50 am • 460 78 • view
Of course the paper is “slick, readable and fundamentally misleading.” It is the Cato Institute after all.
jun 27, 2025, 11:13 am • 5 1 • view
Cato is kind of a suspect organization
jun 27, 2025, 6:54 am • 9 0 • view
I haven’t kept up with the Cato Institute in recent years but it wouldn’t surprise me if the author was a Straussian.
jun 27, 2025, 12:54 pm • 0 0 • view
He's with the heritage foundation
jun 27, 2025, 1:49 pm • 0 0 • view
If true, that is not mentioned in his bio. Regardless, his article comes across to me as run-of-the-mill libertarianism.
jun 27, 2025, 2:24 pm • 3 1 • view
His name and picture are on their site. So what you thought is correct.
jun 27, 2025, 2:25 pm • 1 0 • view
Because Cato published it?
jun 27, 2025, 6:54 am • 0 0 • view
One of the author’s main complaints is that no one agrees on what “misinformation” actually means. And he’s right, there is confusion. So let’s be precise.
jun 27, 2025, 6:53 am • 301 25 • view
There is confusion, but he provides tables with definitions that line up with each other pretty well. The confusion is when people use these terms casually.
jun 27, 2025, 7:10 am • 0 0 • view
Media scholar Clare Wardle and colleagues developed a helpful typology: Disinformation = false or misleading information spread deliberately to deceive or manipulate.
jun 27, 2025, 6:53 am • 472 65 • view
Like Western capitalist governments indulge in to justify their imperialist aggression?
jun 27, 2025, 7:48 am • 1 1 • view
Yes, and in my work I point to the parallel between the lose of public trust in institutions after WW1 propaganda and after the invasion of Iraq as key moments. Both moments required rebuilding public trust in foundational democratic ideals, but its not really happened post 2003
jun 27, 2025, 7:50 am • 7 0 • view
I mean the Iraq war and general response to 9/11 severed my connection with the liberal mainstream, drove me further to the left.
jun 27, 2025, 7:53 am • 1 0 • view
Plus we then had the financial crisis, and time and time again we saw the institutions we had trusted to perform the verification, deliberation and accountability functions fail to live up to expectations, or wildly violate those expectations.
jun 27, 2025, 7:56 am • 3 0 • view
And my argument is that neoliberalism also hollowed out our capacity to form effective democratic counterpublics to respond in an effective manner.
jun 27, 2025, 7:57 am • 4 0 • view
Is it Clare or Claire? vivo.brown.edu/display/cwar...
jun 27, 2025, 8:06 am • 0 0 • view
Gah, Claire, my mistake.
jun 27, 2025, 8:15 am • 3 0 • view
Misinformation = false or misleading information spread by people who believe it’s true. Malinformation = true information used in misleading or harmful ways.
jun 27, 2025, 6:53 am • 480 70 • view
What about 'flooding the zone with shit'? Where does that fit in?
jun 28, 2025, 8:16 am • 1 0 • view
It flattens verification and deliberation by not allowing room for either, ensuring no accountability.
jun 28, 2025, 8:22 am • 2 0 • view
These categories help us move beyond vague fears and look more clearly at the different forms that harmful information can take. But even this isn’t the full picture.
jun 27, 2025, 6:55 am • 284 18 • view
The real danger comes when this material forms disordered discourse, systems of belief that reinforce themselves, reject correction, and disconnect people from any shared standard of reality.
jun 27, 2025, 6:55 am • 372 42 • view
Not long after I read this thread I saw this post. The man's entire world is disordered. To the extent that he's forgotten that there is a reality he should be engaging with. bsky.app/profile/cweb...
jun 28, 2025, 8:46 am • 0 0 • view
aka "Conspiracism".
jun 27, 2025, 10:45 am • 0 0 • view
The Cato paper treats harmful information as just a few false claims floating around online. It says people rarely fall for it, the damage is minor, and the real problem is elite overreaction. This radically understates the scale and nature of the issue.
jun 27, 2025, 6:55 am • 424 48 • view
"The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and ***Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries***- wikipedia
jun 27, 2025, 11:15 am • 3 0 • view
You have got to see this presentation by Senator Whitehouse on how your electric bill will go up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXa... Global warming and AI will raise your electric bill by >30%. Screw you, Chuck Koch!
jul 1, 2025, 1:43 pm • 1 0 • view
i don't think Cato is a good source. "Not surprisingly, Murray’s anti-regulation manifesto is being giddily promoted by right-wing organizations like the American Enterprise Institute, Murray’s institutional home, as well as the CATO Institute..." www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat...
jun 27, 2025, 11:04 am • 0 0 • view
“People rarely fall for it”
jun 27, 2025, 6:57 am • 2 0 • view
Surely elite fear of losing control of the narrative is what is at play here? Are you claiming only right wing populist lie?
jun 27, 2025, 7:50 am • 0 0 • view
Not at all, but you should think about how the elite controlled narratives through the 20th century, what structures existed to allow that and how thats changed in the last 15 years.
jun 27, 2025, 7:53 am • 3 0 • view
If you're not already familiar with his work, Walter Lippmann was a key thinker in this area, even if, as I do, you disagree with his proposed solution www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/dewe...
jun 27, 2025, 7:54 am • 1 0 • view
Isn't Cato tentatively a similar team and "elite' like the infamous heritage foundation?
jun 28, 2025, 8:24 am • 0 0 • view
How do they reconcile the reductions in vaccines because of false information? Dead people is pretty dangerous to me
jun 27, 2025, 10:11 am • 1 0 • view
Why would they write this? It is like the worst Facebook opinions in a paper
jun 27, 2025, 11:09 am • 1 0 • view
The danger isn’t just that people believe lies. It’s that entire communities become locked into belief systems that can’t be challenged, where loyalty replaces evidence, and disagreement feels like betrayal. That doesn’t just distort truth, it breaks trust.
jun 27, 2025, 6:56 am • 759 178 • view
I’m not sure you state clearly enough the origin of these lies. People in positions of trust—Trump, GOP, Fox—band together to create these lies, propagate them and “keep up the bit” no matter how absurd, leaving anyone foolish enough to trust them to believe it. THEN the tribalism compounds it.
jun 27, 2025, 11:51 am • 2 0 • view
Worry a lot about this. In political campaigns they have a “gettable” column of likely voters in the respective district. But I’ve seen anecdotal cases indicating how millions of people who WOULD be persuadable on the merits have been placed beyond the gettable column by these dynamics.
jun 27, 2025, 7:01 am • 5 1 • view
It means nothing less than the collapse of reason as the basis for organising society. And the centrality and elevation of reason is what makes democracies so successful and adaptable.
jun 27, 2025, 7:04 am • 5 1 • view
I see that with the war psychosis taking hold in the UK.
jun 27, 2025, 7:49 am • 0 0 • view
The corruption takes place on several levels, on a personal level misinfo undermines citizen's epistemic rights to develop themselves as human beings that can form opinions and evaluate choices. It removes our right to intelligence and uncorrupted cognitive decision-making.
jun 27, 2025, 2:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Moving beyond the social part you named, it also blows the Marketplace of Ideas to pieces, destroying the very NeoLiberal premise that Cato operates on. The core of their theory is busted. Saying truth doesn't matter in the MoI is like saying money doesn't matter in financial markets.
jun 27, 2025, 2:10 pm • 1 0 • view
Interestingly, that doesn't sound like a modern phenomenon - but I suppose the assumption had become that modern ways would automatically lead to better information?
jul 4, 2025, 8:06 am • 0 0 • view
When this happens at scale, it’s not just bad information, it’s a breakdown in how society makes decisions. We lose the ability to deliberate, to find common ground, to hold anyone accountable. That’s what disordered discourse really is, a collapse in collective reasoning.
jun 27, 2025, 6:56 am • 503 76 • view
📌
jun 27, 2025, 6:59 am • 1 0 • view
On social media quantity beats quality. With all the bots and trolls spinning around, you get a completely skewed view of the facts and the world.
jun 27, 2025, 11:14 am • 5 1 • view
Republicans have been about theater since Reagan. Gingrich started the nonsense speak. Now we have a reality television President with a cabinet cast from Fox News. Bombs are for ratings. Billionaires run things. The BBB is so sad.
jun 27, 2025, 7:03 am • 26 3 • view
And when debate collapses, power doesn’t disappear, it just becomes unaccountable. Truth becomes tribal. Institutions become hollow. People are left shouting across a void, each group certain the others are insane or evil. That’s not freedom, it’s fragmentation.
jun 27, 2025, 6:57 am • 417 64 • view
📌
jun 28, 2025, 8:05 am • 0 0 • view
LOL. The CATO Institute practically birthed “US disinformation”. Taking seriously any opinion they offer on that subject is the equivalent of drinking Jones’ cyanide laced koolaide!!
jun 28, 2025, 6:00 pm • 1 0 • view
Yeah the original Phillip Morris tobacco boys www.thenation.com/article/arch... Independent and Principled? Behind the Cato Myth
jun 30, 2025, 8:24 pm • 0 0 • view