Yet I don't talk down to the crowd. I think the design of the network and the incentives does not encourage wisdom. In other words the ignorance is not voluntary. If you wanted to not be an idiot but all of the Internet, its information flows, advertising, disinfo campaigns, encourage you to be an idiot, to become more ignorant over time, well then what else should society expect?
In other words the ignorance is being generated by the mechanism design. The problem isn't the outcome (ignorant people spewing bad ideas), the problem is why encourage ignorant idea propagation?
For example, is there any automated fact checking on any of the major social media platforms? No. They seem fine letting people be ignorant if it's favorable to their interests. You don't see fact checking yet you see posts censors for violating community standards? So they can pay for moderation, for censorship, but not for automated fact checking? Why give priority to one and not the other?
If or better yet, when I am ignorant, I want to discover the source of my ignorance. The source of my ignorance is low quality information. This problem of ignorance is similar to the problem of obesity, where people over time have to learn how to filter out bad foods, it's the same with bad information.