The framework’s account of public discourse as the site where mutual recognition occurs at scale, taken together with the [§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) technology condition and the structural-extraction logic, issues predictions about how information environments behave.

*First.* Engagement-optimized algorithmic platforms will systematically degrade information-environment quality. Platforms whose revenue depends on attention-capture, by structural pressure, surface content that maximizes engagement (outrage, novelty, identity-confirmation) over content that maximizes recognition accuracy. The degradation is not a contingent failure of platform-design intent; it follows from the misalignment between attention-capture optimization and recognition-quality optimization.

*Second.* Concentrated media ownership produces systematic narrative distortion at scale of the concentration. The distribution of recognized narratives across an information environment reflects the ownership structure of that environment. Where ownership is concentrated, narrative-diversity contracts and narrative-distortion in the direction of owner-aligned preferences expands. The pattern is structural, not contingent on particular owners.

*Third.* Disinformation as deliberate weapon will be more effective in low-trust societies. An interaction effect follows: where mutual-recognition infrastructure is already eroded, disinformation campaigns produce larger recognition-quality reductions than equivalent campaigns in high-trust societies. The interaction implies that low-trust societies face increasing-returns-to-disinformation pressure absent active maintenance investment.

*Fourth.* Public-square infrastructure (libraries, public broadcasting, public education) tracks information-environment quality. The strength of non-engagement-optimized information infrastructure (public libraries, public broadcasters with structural independence from advertising and direct political control, comprehensive public-education systems) governs the resilience of the information environment under disinformation pressure. Societies that have dismantled or underinvested in public-square infrastructure are measurably more vulnerable.

*Fifth.* Speech-protection regimes that confuse private-platform moderation with state censorship will produce policy confusion preceding harm to discourse. Legal and rhetorical confusion between state-censorship constraints (which the representation-quality requirement protects against) and private-platform moderation (which the framework treats as legitimate stewardship of the platform’s contribution to the information environment) produces policy outputs that simultaneously fail to protect discourse from state censorship and fail to protect discourse from engagement-optimization-driven degradation. Beyond the structural confusion itself, the framework flags (as a weaker, less-confirmed result) that the confusion is available for strategic exploitation by actors who benefit from blocked discourse-quality regulation; the prediction rests on the structural confusion and its policy cost, not on the intent attribution.

*Sixth.* AI-generated content at scale will produce a discourse-quality crisis distinct from previous information-environment crises. The scale, speed, and personalization of AI-generated content exceed the information environment’s existing maintenance capacity, producing a crisis qualitatively different from the prior printing-press, broadcast, and social-media crises. The crisis is the test case for the technology-condition framework introduced in [§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) and applied in this section.

*Seventh.* Information-environment quality will track economic-structural variables, not only technological ones. Even where the technology of information distribution is constant, information-environment quality varies with the economic structure of the information industry (advertising-dependent vs subscription vs public; concentrated vs diffuse ownership; engagement-optimized vs subscription-aligned). Information-environment reform that addresses only the technology and not the economic structure produces smaller effects than reformers anticipate.

The non-substitutability of the face-to-face base, and the predictions that follow from it, are established at [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>); the seven predictions above concern the mediation layer that scales the base and hold jointly with the base predictions. Information-environment resilience tracks the strength of the base (a coupling [§9.2.3](<9.2.3 What is Predicted.md>) develops from the base side), which is why the public-square-infrastructure prediction above (the fourth) cannot be met by digital infrastructure alone.

The predictions stated in this subsection are made under engagement with the contested public-discourse opposition traditions [§9.4.1](<9.4.1 What is Disputed.md>) names at premise: the cyber-utopian / networked-community defense (Benkler, *The Wealth of Networks* 2006; Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody* 2008) and Rawlsian political liberalism (Rawls, *Political Liberalism* 1993). Those traditions are engaged at section length in [§9.4.1](<9.4.1 What is Disputed.md>), which grants sub-population recognition through mediated infrastructure to Benkler and Shirky while parting from them on population-scale political-community recognition, and grants the overlapping-consensus structure to Rawls while parting from him on what recognition-accuracy requires institutionally. The predictions stated here apply under that engagement.


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← [9.4.2 What is Required](<9.4.2 What is Required.md>) | [9.4.4 What is Confirmed](<9.4.4 What is Confirmed.md>) →
