Finland Thrashing Fake News?

A report, ranking countries by their resilience to misinformation, placed Finland in top spot. The UK was in a modest 13th place. An elevated ranking was achieved by combining high levels of trust in reputable institutions, an educated population and a genuinely free press. There's a lot of misinformation around. This has resulted in Finland pre-emptively educating its folk to spot propaganda and the manipulative techniques used by purveyors of 'fake news' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/11/britons-gullible-fake-news-finland-misinformation). Sander van der Linden (University of Cambridge) suggests that the UK could improve its performance by 'pre-bunking'. Using an analogy with vaccination, he advocates 'injecting' folk with a 'weakened dose' of obvious misinformation and/or revealing the techniques used to spread these untruths. van der Linden thinks this will enable those exposed, to build up 'cognitive immunity', helping them to recognise and resist 'a full dose of misinformation'. It's a nice analogy but this may not prove a very effective strategy in the UK. Firstly, people here, seem almost pre-disposed to believe the weirdest things (they often want to be entertained rather than informed). Secondly, although the UK nominally has a free press, much of this is controlled by political/commercial interests. Misinformation travels much more quickly than considered rebuttals. Thirdly, the UK educational system generally results in large sections of the population having little real understanding of science, economics or what is mean't by numbers. I can't see the UK matching Finland anytime soon!