I was thinking about it, because wife was telling me story from work, where a woman was scammed with AI generated stuff and her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). And it made me annoyed. How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? We do have a concept of fraud, but advertising seems to be able to move around its edges…
It's still possible to function, it's just that you have to go out and seek information, and usually seek information through channels where the organization is not delivering it to you. Every non-profit files a Form 990 with the IRS, and every public company files a form 10-Q/K with the SEC. There's a wealth of information there for figuring out what the company is doing, but they usually like to obfuscate it in some extremely boring text and financial figures, because they want you to buy into the narrative they deliver to the press and not the facts they deliver to the government. They usually will not outright lie on these, though, because doing so is a crime that can put the CEO, CFO, and Board of Directors in jail.
Same for consumer stuff. Ruthlessly seek out back-channel information about products, whether it's word-of-mouth from friends, online reviews (though these are increasingly easily gamed these days), product tests from independent organizations (though again, many companies provide free products to review in exchange for favorable reviews), etc. I've found that keeping an online subscription to Consumer Reports has been well worth it because they're one of the few review sites where you pay them to review, the company doesn't pay them to get reviewed. Advertisements are worthless; treat them as such. Same goes for random cold calls; it's probably a scam, unless you can corroborate it otherwise.