Trust No One Is Exactly What Authoritarians Want
From Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact by Eric Ressler
May 5, 2026 · 44 min · Episode 87
About this episode
The episode discusses the alarming findings of Joel Breakstone regarding how people evaluate online information amidst rapid technological changes.
Every major technological paradigm shift has broken society before it fixed it. The printing press, radio, television. Each one reshaped how we communicate and what we believe. Now the internet, social media, and AI are repeating the pattern at unprecedented speed. Joel Breakstone, co-founder and executive director of the Digital Inquiry Group, has spent over a decade studying how people evaluate online information, and what he's found is alarming: students, academics, and everyday adults are...
People in this episode
Host: Eric Ressler
Guest: Joel Breakstone
Topics covered
- technology
- information evaluation
- social media
- AI
- communication
- authoritarianism
Keywords
- trust
- authoritarianism
- internet
- social media
- AI
- information evaluation
- communication
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Digital Inquiry Group
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