What happens when seeing is no longer believing?

Democracy may be at a low point in global esteem, but decades of research show that it improves health and wellbeing, strengthens economies, and fosters peace. The accountability and collective problem-solving that drive these outcomes depend on deliberation grounded in shared facts. Yet looking out over the next decade, two fast-accelerating trends in how people consume and produce information—in selective exposure to agreeable content and in our ability to generate realistic-looking audio, documents, photos, and video about things which never really happened—are coming together in ways that pose clear threats to the deliberation that makes those benefits possible. Age-old approaches grounded in reputation and enabled by modern technologies offer a way forward.