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If you want to decrease the spread of misinformation, or if you are at Facebook, Google, etc. and want your org to support this but it isn't doing enough — we a
by avivo 10y ago
If you want to decrease the spread of misinformation, or if you are at Facebook, Google, etc. and want your org to support this but it isn't doing enough — we are actively working on this (and have been since before the election) and would love to get in touch. We believe an impartial 3rd party can help with a few core problems in this domain.
One way to think about this is that some forms of communication amplify confirmation bias (and other cognitive biases). As we develop new forms of communication, we may need to compensate for these biases in new ways. Our motivation is to incentivize better public discourse.
You can reach us here (feel free to just put in your preferred encrypted communication channel...) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSclhq7zrUKI3nxJFiYwJ-NvyW4xAeLbSF7cWxst6GKBON9Y7Q/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSclhq7zrUKI3nxJFiYw...
- cryptarch 10y agoWho is "we"?
- problems 10y ago> decrease the spread of misinformation This rings very "Ministry of Truth" to me. Scary stuff that companies even consider policing this when it's completely not their job. Our social networks should not be deciding what's true and what isn't for us.
- fisherjeff 10y agoJust out of curiosity - who do you think should be deciding that? Certainly not the individual, given the immense resource advantage of the organizations putting out false information.
- problems 10y agoCertainly the individual, assisted by the extreme ease of finding fairly accurate information from reputable organizations. It's extremely worrying that anyone would propose anything else - how some refuse to think for themselves or vet information properly in this day and age I'll never understand.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago>the extreme ease of finding fairly accurate information from reputable organizations. The what now? Doesn't "finding fairly accurate information from reputable organizations" just mean handing your thinking over to the definition of "reputable"?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- problems 10y agoYou can pretty much drop any fake news item into Google and immediately get back results from more reputable sites saying it's fake. Yes, you might have to do a little research into what's reputable, what their biases are, etc, but it's really not that hard and only has to be done about once or twice per major source. If you can't be assed to do that, yeah, you get fake news, enjoy it. I don't think a sizeable portion of the population is changing their political opinions over it, more that the bases are using it to confirm pre-existing biases.
- akisej 10y agoHow many do you discover via google.com vs social networking sites like Facebook? The logistics of switching between discovering an article on Facebook and verifying it on google.com is cumbersome enough with short attention spans on web. If you consume content passively on mobile (as an increasing number of people do), there's no reasonable expectation you can be held to, to switch between Safari/ Chrome and Facebook every time you read something. Of all the articles you read in a day, how many do you yourself verify by looking them up? How many do you consider "plausible enough", hence never bother checking on their factuality? If something does conform to your pre-existing biases, you have zero incentive to actively look for something that challenges your opinion, but if a disclaimer was "right there", it might be harder for you to ignore.
- captain_crabs 10y agoWhen the ideal is more work than the default, most people won't behave ideally. So while I agree with you in spirit, who defines the reputable organizations? Individuals have an asymmetric losing fight here since the effort it takes to put out crap is far less than to deal with it. How can we make the process of finding & consuming news humane in that it works ideally for the average/below-average user? That's the hard question, and I think it still remains.
- rando444 10y agoThis problem existed before facebook or google. The problem in question existed in the form of e-mail forwards, usenet groups, and most likely existed in other forms before the internet. You can't change the discourse without altering what people say or what people hear.. and nobody wants that. The only solution is a better educated population. People that are able to determine fact from fiction, or at least the common sense to do their own research. This is not a problem for a piece of software, this is a problem for those tasked with the education of future generations.
- dkraft 10y agoEXACTLY. This starts at home and it's exacerbated at the government learning centers.