informed citizens

Informed educated citizens. Deliberately removing critical thinking from the syllabus is much the same as gerrymandering, but with follow on effects for the economy (actually society, but due to lack of broad education, economy is all that matters now).

Representative democracy has problems. Consider alternatives. Random citizen election worked for centuries for the Athenians.

It depends on how you want democracy to work. If you’re aiming for a fair society, sure. If you’re aiming for a dictatorship in disguise, disinformation, misdirection, propaganda, and straight-up lies are the foundation of your regime.

Mussolini pretty much wrote the book on converting a democracy to a dictatorship.

Worse still, democracy relies on informed citizens.

No it doesn't. This is literally the oldest anti-democracy argument; people are too stupid to rule themselves.

Citizens are entitled to vote because they're subject to the authority of the State. Dumb people still have to pay taxes and obey the police. A voter who chooses a candidate because Mars is in retrograde casts a ballot that is every bit as legitimate as the head of the political science department. "low information voter" is an argument for voterID, poll taxes, and literacy tests; it's voter suppression.

Well it depends on the gravity of the misinformation right? Is it just a small prank or are you substantially influencing someone's world view? How grave are the consequences of the misinformation for the affected? How much distress does the misinformation cause them? I suppose there's always differences in degree.

Like the thing about the swedish scientists finding out a person ate like 20-50 Spiders in their lifetime while asleep, bc of spiders crawling into our mouths, which turned out to be fake news that was supposed to show how much easier misinformation spread if you just put the claim in that "scientists found out". Still many ppl believe it though.

So is it harmful to people who have severe arachnophobia? Is it just a funny experiment?

I didn't mean lies I mean intentional disinformation as in posting and spreading "fake news", willfully publishing or sharing false information through media of any kind, as organization or individual. So yes, it involves lying but "lie" is too unspecific and general a term here.

Depends how you define lying. If you mean saying things that you know to be untrue then I would disagree that it's necessary.

I read a book about lying around 7 years ago and it was making the argument that it's only justifiable when used to prevent greater harm, the classic example there being Nazis on your door asking if you have Anne Frank in the attic. Other than that it's always wrong and often completely unnecessary. Applies to white lies as well.

The only single time I've lied since then was reflexively telling a beggar that I didn't have any cash. Again, completely unnecessary. In fact I've not lied for so long that lying doesn't even come to mind anymore as an option when handling a situation. People can tell that they're not going to like what I'm about to say next before I even say it because they can see me hesitate and carefully choose my words. They don't always like hearing it but not one person has cut ties because of it - rather the opposite. They now come to me when they want the truth.

Additional benefit of this is that it makes me carefully consider my own behaviour so that I don't need to lie about it later.

Again, not lying doesn't mean speaking everything that's on your mind. It simply means not saying things you know to be untrue.

May I inquire as per the reason of your loling? Why lol and what about? Care to elaborate?