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> However, communications from the government to counter other communications identified as disinformation are government propaganda. If they are not identified
by laughinghan 7y ago
> However, communications from the government to counter other communications identified as disinformation are government propaganda. If they are not identified as such, then they have the same problem as the original disinformation.
Yes, that's why you need an independent media, as mentioned in the article: "The mainstream media, of course, then picks up this counter-narratives and then do a balanced report."
> making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it [...] all of the information that people in a country can see
From the article, emphasis mine: "stop being preferred to show on people's newsfeed, but it's not censorship. If you look specifically for that friend, that post is still there, but they have a warning that says it's already fact-checked as false."
They key word here is preferred. It's not blocked, but rather deprioritized and contextualized.
Obviously, there's good reason to still be uncomfortable with this, because this advantages the dominant worldview. Fundamentally though, tradeoffs have to be made, to prevent things like the Rohingya crisis and the emboldening of the far-right. Deprioritizing and contextualizing of fringe worldviews, without fully blocking them, seems like a good tradeoff to me.
- ilaksh 7y agoThe problem is you have an authority deciding what supposedly is fact and what is not fact.
- laughinghan 7y agoAnd who is that problematic authority? The social network defers to the fact-checkers, of whom there are multiple independent ones, and who should be corroborating the government's story not taking it at face value.
- incompatible 7y agoA government body doesn't become an "authority" automatically, in the sense of being trusted as an authoritative source. It has to establish such a reputation over time. If it has established such a reputation, I'd be happier to trust its information than something circulated on Facebook from an unknown source. After all, we generally can't check each observation or theory ourselves first hand. Deciding which sources are trustworthy and which are not is a critical issue.
- incompatible 7y agoActually, if people are willing to be influenced by disinformation on the Internet, I suspect they are not using an "authority" model of information at all. Perhaps all they care about is whether the "information" is useful to whatever causes they believe in, not its source. E.g., an anti-vaxxer reading a post on Facebook that agrees that vaccination is harmful, by this concept would be likely to approve the post (like, share) without wasting time with authorities or fact-checking.
- alexmlamb 7y ago"of whom there are multiple independent ones, and who should be corroborating the government's story not taking it at face value" How's middle school?
- laughinghan 7y agoNice one. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chatmasta 7y agoWould any of this be a problem if social sites would restore chronological news feeds? 99% of these “problems” stem from newsfeeds that are algorithmic rather than simply chronological.
- laughinghan 7y agoFirst of all, there's a known, deadly problem of disinformation spreading via WhatsApp forwarding [1], and I'm pretty sure WhatsApp notifications are chronological. But in any case, definitely none of this would be a problem if we got rid of the Internet. What's your point? Algorithmic newsfeeds benefit social media companies enormously (by increasing engagement) and at least some consumers (I'm not denying they also hurt some consumers). They'll never voluntarily give them up, and banning them would be an extremely oddly specific measure that's probably unconstitutional and definitely has lots of loopholes ("we're not an algorithm newsfeed---we just prioritizing your notifications, like Gmail's Priority Inbox"). They're here to stay. We can fix them or come up with something better that eclipses them, but there's no banning them. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191455/whatsapp-forwarding-limit-five-messages-misinformation-battle https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/21/18191455/whatsapp-forward...
- chatmasta 7y agoI never suggested banning anything. I'm merely asking questions. But sure, to play devil's advocate, is there some precedent here? Maybe with cigarettes for example? Nicotine cigarettes benefit tobacco companies enormously (by increasing addiction). They'll never voluntarily give them up, either. Yet we have approaches for dealing with addictive consumables; taxes, health warnings, education, etc. I wonder if similar approaches might work when applied to social media.
- laughinghan 7y agoThanks for the thoughtful response; upvoted. I don't think cigarettes are a relevant precedent. It's not like cigarettes cause cancer in some people and make others healthier. (I guess it can make you thinner? But yet it still increases your likelihood of heart disease.) Algorithmic newsfeeds are a much better experience for many people, who don't want thoughtful discussion and wedding and family photos buried under people announcing to the world that they're pooping. You also didn't respond to my point that deadly viral WhatsApp forwards refute your contention that "99%" of disinformation problems are due to algorithmic rather than chronological newsfeeds.