don’t think the average person in 1926 assumed they were an expert on medicine or physics or finance or whatever. If a doctor, or physicist, or banker told them something, they’d generally nod their head.

So many of those professionals were just professional scammers back then. Until the professionalization of these fields, in the 1940s/50s, you really couldn't trust them. And avoiding people who claimed to do surgery/treat cancer, while keeping all your money in your mattress was genuinely a smarter move.

the other half is that they weren’t able to shout it into an algorithm that absolutely loves the controversy it generates, and serve it to billions of people automatically.

A lot of this shit is amplified and filtered to operate as it's own native advertising.

The shit opinions that align with the marketing agenda are the ones that get front-paged.

Vaccine denialism was a problem during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918.

In the eighties, I remember that Christian Scientists would refuse medical treatment for their dying children, choosing to pray instead. The kids usually died.

There was always a subset of the population who refused to acknowledge science or expertise.

These days, we've gotten rid of the government departments of experts that are supposed to advise our legislators regarding the consequences of the bills they want to pass. Instead they just listen to the lobbyists of the corporations who finance their campaigns.

Or in the case of Trump, his own imagination, since he hallucinates more than Google Gemini. A recent example is his belief that the CHIPS act requires the hiring of trans folk to run microchip-making factories. (It doesn't. Also the rumor that he confused transgender with transistor is probably false.)