We Are Headed Into the "Huckster Economy" and the Manipulators Are Winning

"This is my 36th year as a journalist. I spent that entire time learning how to tell stories that will make you care. But when we're up against lies, we just can't win, because facts are really boring. Hard to capture your amygdala the way lies do. ... Social media brings out the worst of us.

If you're my age, you remember the old cartoon when you have a conscience and you have a devil and an angel trying to tell you what to do on each shoulder. But what social media has done, what American tech has done ... is it's kicked off the angel, it's given the devil a microphone, and it's injected directly into your brain."

These quotes come from the remarks of Nobel Peace Prize winning writer Maria Ressa at the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference, just a month before a new election takes place in the Philippines. Every week there seem to be more stories about this erosion of trust. Another writer termed this the "huckster economy," a place where the tricksters are winning elections, making money and shaping reality however they want it to be.

The conclusion Ressa points to is immediately true and urgent: "we are all being manipulated in the same way." Until we recognize that and collectively open our eyes, it will be nearly impossible to fight back.