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What's wrong with creating fake accounts? Nobody has to listen to what they say. This worry about disinformation seems to be the idea that people see multiple a
by lopmotr 7y ago
What's wrong with creating fake accounts? Nobody has to listen to what they say. This worry about disinformation seems to be the idea that people see multiple accounts making some claim and wrongly conclude that it represents a popular opinion, and so believe that claim themselves. But that's a ridiculous way to form beliefs even without fake accounts. Just the selection bias of people who would use a particular service already makes it non-representative, let alone whatever algorithm the service uses to decide what messages to show you. And of course popularity doesn't make a claim true anyway, even if you do get a good sample.
What if they're not even fake accounts, but some big group (like a country) just organizes its members to post particular things? Should those users be banned? Or a business pays people to promote their products (the business model of influencers)? What if that organizing isn't particularly formal but is gently guided in one direction in the form of propaganda or advertising (nationalists and fans)? Now do we have to ban all users from some country because they've been too brainwashed by their local propaganda to be trusted as acting like independent human beings? Ban all Christians? They seem to keep repeating the same false information like robots, and somebody might get fooled into believing it.
- objectivetruth 7y agoQ: "What's wrong with creating fake accounts?" A: signal:noise ratio gets worse when there are tons of noisy bots spamming everywhere. Q: "that's a ridiculous way to form beliefs" A: Yeah, but that IS how the (vast?) majority of society changes their beliefs so it does matter. Q: all your other implied questions A: it's against the ToS. People who don't like that fact are SoL.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]