What is the future of democratic legitimacy when synthetic media is indistinguishable from documentary evidence?

This is an open Question Network on Futurecraft. Questions, not posts or threads, are the primary unit of intellectual work here. Each question is held by a small, cross-disciplinary working group and remains open until productive contradictions have been mapped, adjacent disciplines have weighed in, and the inquiry has either produced a durable synthesis or been honestly retired.

Working thesis: Provenance, not detection, is the only durable foundation. Legitimacy will accrue to institutions that can attest, not those that can debunk.

The current working group draws from 3 contributors spanning 4 adjacent disciplines, Notarial systems, Civic journalism, Identity infrastructure. The contradictions listed below are the points where the inquiry is most likely to fracture; they are preserved, not resolved away. Open contributions are by invitation; observers may follow without joining the working group.