>Sure you can have access to the “truth” in the west, but you also see a staggering amount of propaganda/mass manipulation/willful distraction and no easy way of differentiating the two.

The thing is, when you have access to both truth and misinformation, you still stand a non-zero chance of filtering out trash and getting to the truth. In that scenario, misinformation has to step up its game and compete with real information. It cannot be too wild and out there to capture the minds of the majority. Whoever spreads the misinformation has to carefully balance the strength of their misinformation vs. appearing legitimate.

On the other hand, when the truthful info is all blocked completely, the quality of misinformation and propaganda doesn't matter. If it is the only source of info, then that's what the population will consume. It can be as wild as possible, and it won't matter at all, people will eat it up. No need to balance the strength vs. legitimate appearance, you can put all your chips on strength.

One can argue about how much truth people are able to consume when it is mixed with tons of misinformation, but if truthful sources are blocked, the answer to "how much" becomes "almost none". And the situation is made even worse by how much more wild and more dishonest the misinformation can become if there is a vacuum of sources of truth due to them being completely blocked.

As an example, in countries that tend to block major sources of truth and where we tend to think that a lot of people are just mindless sheep eating up government propaganda, I personally don't think people there are just naturally too dumb to not figure out they are being lied to or they are predisposed naturally to be more susceptible to propaganda.

When you have a vacuum of info, it has to be filled by something. If all that's on the plate is wild misinformation, then that's all you will eat, it isn't like you have any other choice, aside from completely isolating yourself from society.

The world is also just learning how to deal with the damage. It reminds me of the time when the Flintstones were brought to you by some cigarette company.

You're charmingly naive if you think that the Turkish powers that be don't put out an equally staggering amount of propaganda/mass manipulation/willful distraction themselves, in addition to blocking access to the information that they think might be detrimental to maintaining their power.

You’re right that learning to read critically is a challenge, but the idea that just not having access to the written word is somehow better...

I guess I’ll put it in your terms: I have a hard time buying that.

If your suggestion is that it’d be better to go back to a centrally controlled publishing industry... I also don’t buy that.

Reading critically is hardly a solution to this; you evaluate “truth” based on sources and authorities with internalized misinformation themselves entirely rationally. I don’t have a prescription, and I am certainly against censorship.

This presupposes that misinformation and propaganda doesn’t exist under a “blocking” regime?