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But then isn't it OK to blame and shame those who have engineered and monetized the public loss? It's not just the loss of some Great Truth, but the loss of eve

by kurthr 8y ago

But then isn't it OK to blame and shame those who have engineered and monetized the public loss? It's not just the loss of some Great Truth, but the loss of even honest debate and collective acceptance of facts, or universal disgust at obvious hypocrisy and lying. Spreading disinformation for profit (and allowing trolls for clicks) is a pollution of a public good. It's as classic an example of a Tragedy of the Commons as any other. Edit: I am also saddened by the loss of sarcasm and irony. Complexity must be replaced by simplicity again.

tim333 8y ago
I think its generally ok to blame and shame. Zuckerberg seems fairly ashamed of some of Facebook's failings and is hiring thousands of staff to try and fix things. You wonder a bit about people who are not ashamed, if there's some way to change the incentives.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
It's a nested epistemological problem. It's impossible to first create a measurement system for "truth" which could uniformly be used to judge any series of statements. Doubly so when the topics are not mathematically rigorous in nature. On top of that, it's a major challenge to determine intention - eg. was the author of a piece of "fake news" duped, were they being malicious, is there a self-serving bias or is the author simply incompetent? Third, what is the economic and political environment that the author resides inside? Does the author have a choice of what to write unencumbered or is there a economic or political system which is unreasonably burdensome that they have to hew to? So it's not so simple to just assume that there is a unipolar evaluation that can be done when evaluating communications/persuasion/propaganda.
PunchTornado 8y ago
I don't think there was ever a "collective acceptance of facts". Previously the type of people that are now believing fake news were not reading or receiving news at all, or in a very narrow form. They were blocked from the debate.

by kurthr 8y ago

tim333 8y ago

I think its generally ok to blame and shame. Zuckerberg seems fairly ashamed of some of Facebook's failings and is hiring thousands of staff to try and fix things. You wonder a bit about people who are not ashamed, if there's some way to change the incentives.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

It's a nested epistemological problem. It's impossible to first create a measurement system for "truth" which could uniformly be used to judge any series of statements. Doubly so when the topics are not mathematically rigorous in nature. On top of that, it's a major challenge to determine intention - eg. was the author of a piece of "fake news" duped, were they being malicious, is there a self-serving bias or is the author simply incompetent? Third, what is the economic and political environment that the author resides inside? Does the author have a choice of what to write unencumbered or is there a economic or political system which is unreasonably burdensome that they have to hew to? So it's not so simple to just assume that there is a unipolar evaluation that can be done when evaluating communications/persuasion/propaganda.

PunchTornado 8y ago

I don't think there was ever a "collective acceptance of facts". Previously the type of people that are now believing fake news were not reading or receiving news at all, or in a very narrow form. They were blocked from the debate.