When people discovered that telling people what they want to hear makes them money.
My favorite example of this is the entire sphere of anti-science "health" stuff on TikTok. Seeds oils bad, steak good, raw milk good, chemo bad. I noticed something. Every single time, without fail, this person is trying to sell me something. Sometimes it's outright linked in the TikTok, sometimes it's in their bio. But they're always salespeople.
Salespeople lie guys. They want you to buy their stuff, of course they're going to tell you their stuff works.
General inability to distinguish the form of content from its veracity? The same people that assailed the internet in the 90s probably bought tabloids at the supermarket checkout. Newsweek, News of the World, who can tell the difference?
Perception plays an underappreciated role in shaping reality. If people want to believe in happy lies or overblown outrage, they will do that with or without the internet to guide them.
It's not about scams though. It's about bullshit news stories. My anecdotal evidence says older folks are far more likely to buy a bullshit "news" story.
Also do you have any links to those studies? I would genuinely like to see them.
I think your parent comment was referring to studies about scams rather than bullshit and propaganda. I don't recall any studies specifically measuring non-financial gullibility.
When and why did that happen?