How are societies going to function when there are no trusted institutions and no good ways for the average person to distinguish better from worse information?
The same way they used to before we had TV?
TV, before cable came along, was okay. When there were just four channels on TV, the family would watch shows together on their single set. The only phones in the house were in the kitchen and possibly one in the master bedroom. As a kid, you had to ask before you called someone. If your family was typical, you read the local daily paper and had a few magazine subscriptions. We got Time, Newsweek, Economist, Life, National Geo, Atlantic Monthly, and a few others. I'd read them cover to cover. We would watch the half-hour nightly news together (for my father, a Republican, that meant no left-wing Cronkite).
I was a kid living in South Florida during the Cuban missile crisis. There were fighter jets and cargo planes flying over us every day. We wouldn't know what was happening until the nightly news--imagine that (I don't recall any 24-hour radio news back then). Everybody talked to everybody else--neighbors over their fences, on porches, in the diners, while shopping. Not a single person would be staring into their palms scrolling through Zergnet or Outbrain clickbait.
I don't recall **** being an issue (back then, news organizations would just leave stuff out of their reporting to suit their audience). The yelling took place in the opinion pages between professional types who'd earned the right have an opinion. Now that right belongs to anyone with an internet connection.
Guess I was feeling a little nostalgic there and got a little off topic...