What’s worse than fake news? The distortion of reality itself.

[Commentary] Which hurts civilization more: no one believing anything, or everyone believing lies? If we fail to take immediate action to protect our news and information ecosystem, we may soon find out. We are careening toward an infocalypse — a catastrophic failure of the marketplace of ideas. So what can we do? In short, we need massive investment across industry, civil society and government, to understand and mitigate threats to our information ecosystems. And we need it now.  As of now, there are a few particularly promising mitigations that deserve immediate consideration:

1. Monitoring the information ecosystem
2. Fostering responsible research and design
3. Implementing authenticity infrastructure
4. Ensuring information markets reward reality

[Aviv Ovadya is chief technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan and a Knight News Innovation Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.]