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Sure, but, like porn and art, we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion. A simple landing page on The Onion or Babylon Bee is all Snopes needs

Sure, but, like porn and art, we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion. A simple landing page on The Onion or Babylon Bee is all Snopes needs to do, whereas it's clear Info Wars has an agenda of spreading disinformation and it's useful combatting specific articles of theirs. Last I knew, Snopes isn't and cannot be run as a simple application of objective rules. You can follow guidelines, but debunking the type of Info Wars, or Trumpian, disinformation requires more mental effort than that. If it didn't, if it was the simple application of objective rules, there would be little value in the site.

jacquesm 7y ago
> we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion Correction, you can. But unfortunately not everybody can.
- a_tractor 7y ago
  Then something has gone horribly wrong, either in the nature (or its expression) of human beings or in your estimation of human beings. If you are indeed right then the entire rational framework supporting the very notion of a functional democratic society of free men and women, which assumes that humans are rational animals capable of making moral judgements and deciding between right and wrong as an evolutionary strategy, is forfeit. I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but I would be more interested in solving the original problem that makes this true, which in my view would represent a corruption of a human's natural abilities. These types of issues expose a problem that needs to be solved elsewhere, so in that sense it is useful not to nerf the entire information world of all potential confusion.
- beerandt 7y ago
  This I think, is the source of much of the disagreement: 1) whether content should be judged on it's intended vs perceived meaning 2) whether we should make an effort to reduce everything to be understandable to the lowest common denominator.
- davvolun 7y ago
  You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time ... but in general, while people may be fooled by The Onion a few times, they tend to learn and do better in the future. - Abraham Lincoln - Michael Scott

jacquesm 7y ago

> we can tell the difference between Info Wars and The Onion Correction, you can. But unfortunately not everybody can.

a_tractor 7y ago
Then something has gone horribly wrong, either in the nature (or its expression) of human beings or in your estimation of human beings. If you are indeed right then the entire rational framework supporting the very notion of a functional democratic society of free men and women, which assumes that humans are rational animals capable of making moral judgements and deciding between right and wrong as an evolutionary strategy, is forfeit. I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but I would be more interested in solving the original problem that makes this true, which in my view would represent a corruption of a human's natural abilities. These types of issues expose a problem that needs to be solved elsewhere, so in that sense it is useful not to nerf the entire information world of all potential confusion.
beerandt 7y ago
This I think, is the source of much of the disagreement: 1) whether content should be judged on it's intended vs perceived meaning 2) whether we should make an effort to reduce everything to be understandable to the lowest common denominator.
davvolun 7y ago
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time ... but in general, while people may be fooled by The Onion a few times, they tend to learn and do better in the future. - Abraham Lincoln - Michael Scott