I don't think reputation gets you that far alone, we already live in a world where misinformation spreads like wildfire through follower counts and page ranks.
The problem is quality takes time, and therefore loses relevance.
We need a way to break people out of their own human nature and reward delayed gratification by teaching critical thinking skills and promoting thoughtfulness.
I sadly don't see an exciting technological solution here. If anything it's tweaks to the funding models that control the interests of businesses like Instagram, Reddit, etc.
Why can't posting a verifiably true image create as much or more instant gratification as sending a fake one? It will probably be more gratifying, once everyone is sending fake ones and yours is the only real one (if people can know that).
Sure, but you were asking why truth is less gratifying.
Also, "truth" is clearly something that requires more resources. It is a lifelong endeavour of art/science/learning. You can certainly luck into it on occasion but most of us never will. And often something fictional can project truth better than evidence or analysis ever can. Almost everything turns into an abstraction.
No, that is a nihilistic belief which does not get buildings built or software written.
One may "luck" into truth by being born in a poor neighborhood or by living in a warzone, and having eyes and a camera. Or by being rich and invited to a club and having a microphone.
Truth is everywhere, but capturing it is expensive. The tax on truth is the easy spread and generation of lies. The idea that the fictional can encapsulate truth is of course true, but it doesn't mean everything is better an abstraction. Losing a leg is more powerful as a reality than as an abstraction. Peddlers of falsehoods, then, only win when truth can be abstracted.
Moreover: People who read literature read it knowing it stands in for truth. People who watch TikTok believe it is true, and are disenchanted when shown otherwise. More power resides in a grain of truth than a mountain of falsehood; so any tool for proving veracity will always have an outsized value against tools for generating fakes.
The last redoubt of propagandists when faced with the threat of truth is to claim that no one cares anymore what's true. But that's false. In fact, that's when they begin to fool themselves. It's not that no one in China or Russia values the truth, for instance. It's just that they say what they're told to say, and don't believe a word of it.
The problem is quality takes time, and therefore loses relevance.
We need a way to break people out of their own human nature and reward delayed gratification by teaching critical thinking skills and promoting thoughtfulness.
I sadly don't see an exciting technological solution here. If anything it's tweaks to the funding models that control the interests of businesses like Instagram, Reddit, etc.