While it is true that certain circles of people on the internet are very smart in aggregate, I don't believe you can extend that to internet as general; Empirically, you can just have a look at the "general" trends on Facebook and Reddit, even twitter.
I think its true in the sense that if enough people are paying attention, all dishonestly and lies will be unraveled. I remember back when simcity 2013 came out EA said that always online was required because the game does a lot of processing on the servers that would be too much for your computer but shortly after someone patched out the code that checks for internet access and discovered that everything in the game except multiplayer still works.
The individuals do not have to be smart here, there just has to be one person who will bother.
> The individuals do not have to be smart here, there just has to be one person who will bother.
I don't think it works like that, most social media are a game of numbers, if one smart person was enough, you wouldn't have nonsenses like flat-earth and similar becoming "popular topics".
The statement is that the internet will find the truth. Not that they will all agree on the truth or not also find untruth. For almost every single issue the truth exists on the internet.
Because in the context of consumers, that is what internet is, social media and forums (which are social media in my book). Bloggers and other professional reports are a different story.
> The smart cow problem is thought to be derived from the expression: "It only takes one smart cow to open the latch of the gate, and then all the other cows follow.”
I believe in this context smart doesn't mean the average intellectual capability of a netizen. It refers to the internet as a whole and its power to dissect information simply due to the sheer number of users dedicated to a certain topic.
I understand, but as you say, it is only true for certain topics, however, sadly, internet as a general is full of misinformation, disinformation, toxicity, and plain outright nonsense.
I am not sure it is worth repeating, but as I said, the notion that "internet is scary smart" is only true for certain groups and topics, but not internet as general. That does not mean there is no "smart" forums or smart people on the internet, nor I made any remarks about YC News.
The internet probably isn't much smarter than any other community, they just have the highly efficient communication on their side which allows any nobody to easily call out a company and immediately reach a sufficiently large audience.
Of course this also allows misinformation to spread more easily.
