Sorry for not expressing my point more clearly. It's not that nobody should ever engage in debunking, but that deliberately bullshit statements are often introduced on social media to steal the time of well-meaning debunkers.

I realized Qanon was going to be a problem from when it first appeared, but that's because I've spent about 20 years paying close attention to mis- and disinformation and political influence groups. What I'm pointing out here is that the time costs of lying vs debunking favor liars, especially when aggregated across communities.