A new kind of anti-virus
I was watching a podcast on the Joe Rogan Experience the other day featuring Elon Musk. He had an interesting point in which he said it is not so much about computer viruses today as it is something that can infect the mind.
The memetic nature of ideas
The fact we live in an age where ideas, jokes, remarks, thoughts can be shared so rapidly and across vast distances makes it so that a computer virus is not the main thing to fear. It can steal digital data, maybe even ransom you out of some money and worse steal your identity. However these all rely on mechanisms to deliver it to you that keep getting more and more closed off and there is a finite limit to the success rate of these malwares. Long gone are the days of easy bypassing of the anti-malware and anti-virus mechanisms in place. The early age of the Internet, the dawn of the global World Wide Web was a frontier place where everything was made from an idealistic utopian point of view. It did not occur to people to think that harm may be the intention instead of cooperative building up of the future of all mankind.
Sadly these entities always exist in our social communities, the ones that exist only to spread negative emotions. Prey on the fears, the doubts, the unknowns, the irrational behaviours we all have, and turn that into a singular focus that seems to be a general detrimental attitude towards the furthering of the human race as a whole on cultural, intellectual, spiritual and emotional levels. Nowadays however the problem exists that one such entity has a massive reach immediately. Only a few need to pick up on something and share it and so on and instantly the meme is transmitted and ideas and thoughts are formed and the staying power of this cannot be underestimated.
Look at the myths surrounding vaccines, aspartame and other likened stories.
This means that Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets are a cesspool of negative ideas that hamper our growth. They stay and infect the minds of many in subtle and less subtle ways. Even presidential voting can be altered on a large enough mass of people. This psychological warfare is something that is difficult to wrap your head around and be detached from.
Biological anti-malware
What we need is some sort of biological anti-malware that would scan the information as it came into the brain and check what it is, what it conveys, is it true or false, is it fact or factoid, will it do harm to our long term growth and more of these questions in order to make sure it will not negatively impact us. We have lost the ability to not only rationally think, but be nuanced about it, and see it from multiple perspectives.