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The key part is probably the distinction between deliberate and accidental misinformation. Yes the latter can be problematic as well, but it would seem ridiculo
by CM30 8y ago
The key part is probably the distinction between deliberate and accidental misinformation. Yes the latter can be problematic as well, but it would seem ridiculous to ban someone for simply making mistakes. Everyone does so, from professional journalists to average Joes on the street.
Unfortunately, even if those pushing deliberate misinformation are banned, then the problem will keep going since others will spread the information because they mistakenly believe its true.
- stordoff 8y agoThat's in a way a similar problem - how do you distinguish between deliberate and accidental (especially if you start banning deliberate misinformation, and deliberate misinformers start trying to make it look accidental)? You might be able to catch the more blatant examples (such as it being the only thing they tweet about and it being consistently wrong), but in general I'm not sure how you can look at a false message and decide if it was deliberate or a mistake. If you then decide to ban all misinformation (because false information is a problem even if it is a mistake), that goes back to the difficulty of deciding what is misinformation - people can cherry-pick true information in a way that gives a misleading impression, or if someone makes a statement that might be true, but there is no evidence for it, do you have to assume that it is false? I agree that there is a problem here, but I don't know that banning misinformation is the right way to solve it - there are too many gray areas, and it grants _a lot_ of power to social media companies to let them determine what is true.