Step 1: Find the cracks. ... We need to become reflexively suspicious of information that makes us angry at our fellow citizens.
Do we, though? Maybe the right defense here is to be honest with each other about the significance of our division. I mean, shouldn't we be a bit upset when our "fellow citizens" engage in bad behaviors? Sometimes the cracks are real.
The scientist in me says that instead of expending a lot of energy futilely trying to hold things together, we should explore what happens when you use those natural cracks to split things apart. Quarantine anti-vax populations. Brexit away! Let Texas secede. In whole or in part, we need to be more experimental when it comes to how we manage the cracks.
Step 4: Build audiences. ... Social media companies need to detect and delete accounts belonging to propagandists and bots and groups run by those propagandists.
I think a better defense is to abandon social media itself. You don't need those companies to mediate your genuine relationships.
Step 5: Conceal your hand. Here the answer is attribution, attribution, attribution.
Said with some irony, of course, since this blog allows anonymous commenting. It is a double-edged sword, though, because strong attribution can have dangerous consequences when paired with false attribution. And there's the flip side, too, like when people who post something offensive to social media try to claim their account got hacked.
Step 6: Cultivate useful idiots. ... Focus instead on persuading the persuadable.
Another double-edged sword. Perhaps they'd be less idiotic (or at least less useful) if they weren't so easy to persuade in the first place. The root defense for a lot of these steps seems to be better educating the public so that they have the tools they need to behave like responsible members of a civil society. If they still can't do that, well, let those cracks form and let their ice floe float away.
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