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>So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of misinformation? The easiest is to get rid of bots and control who can tweet. Anyone can

by cwhiz 6y ago

>So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of misinformation? The easiest is to get rid of bots and control who can tweet. Anyone can create an account but to tweet you need to prove your identity. Bots are the real issue. Trump lying on social media is a problem but it's not fundamentally dissimilar to him lying on TV or at a campaign rally. He is a liar and whatever platform he is on he will use it to lie. The problem is all the bots masquerading as humans making people think and believe that the lies are mainstream facts.

jobigoud 6y ago
Misinformation spreads a lot human-to-human too. Like on Whatsapp or Facebook for example.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  It does but that also happens in real life outside of digital spaces. It’s not something you can control. How much did this “reopen America” botnet influence national discussion? People don’t innately expect a Twitter or Facebook user to be a bot. We have to remove these bot accounts. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-‘reopening-america’-may-be-bots https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-dis...
metrokoi 6y ago
What would be required to prove your identity? Would you be able to tweet anonymously, or must you tweet under that identity? There are some issues with that, for example people without government identification would not be allowed to tweet. Perhaps you could use unique fingerprints, but that turns into a huge privacy concern and I can never see that being accepted. Maybe there are some unique bio-markers that could be used which people feel would be irrelevant or otherwise useless enough to not be an invasion of privacy.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  Drivers license, utility bill, phone number, credit card, etc. The same types of things that other services ask you to provide to prove that you are a real person. Tweeting anonymously is a non-starter unless they can curtail the bot problem in some other way. If they could curtail the bot problem then they would be doing it already and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Half the content on Twitter and Facebook is from bots. I would say this is the most fundamentally urgent problem to solve to protect Democracy in this country.
  - ll931110 6y ago
    That would be deal breakers with whistleblowers (Edward Snowden).
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    The point of proving identity would be to curtail the bot problem. If someone can fake identification in order to get an account created, then it's trivial to just make up a fake name and picture of a person. Forcing people to not be anonymous does nothing to solve a bot problem, and causes a lot of problems. What if that person is gay with a very conservative family that would not accept them? They would be unable to speak how they please with mandatory non-anonymity. Twitter already requires a phone number, prepaid credit cards can be very cheap, and not everyone has utility bills in their names. Many people cannot get drivers licenses. These are great for privileged people, but discriminatory against unprivileged people. I don't think stifling their voices is something we need more of.

by cwhiz 6y ago

jobigoud 6y ago

Misinformation spreads a lot human-to-human too. Like on Whatsapp or Facebook for example.

cwhiz 6y ago
It does but that also happens in real life outside of digital spaces. It’s not something you can control. How much did this “reopen America” botnet influence national discussion? People don’t innately expect a Twitter or Facebook user to be a bot. We have to remove these bot accounts. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-‘reopening-america’-may-be-bots https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-dis...

metrokoi 6y ago

What would be required to prove your identity? Would you be able to tweet anonymously, or must you tweet under that identity? There are some issues with that, for example people without government identification would not be allowed to tweet. Perhaps you could use unique fingerprints, but that turns into a huge privacy concern and I can never see that being accepted. Maybe there are some unique bio-markers that could be used which people feel would be irrelevant or otherwise useless enough to not be an invasion of privacy.

cwhiz 6y ago
Drivers license, utility bill, phone number, credit card, etc. The same types of things that other services ask you to provide to prove that you are a real person. Tweeting anonymously is a non-starter unless they can curtail the bot problem in some other way. If they could curtail the bot problem then they would be doing it already and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Half the content on Twitter and Facebook is from bots. I would say this is the most fundamentally urgent problem to solve to protect Democracy in this country.
- ll931110 6y ago
  That would be deal breakers with whistleblowers (Edward Snowden).
- metrokoi 6y ago
  The point of proving identity would be to curtail the bot problem. If someone can fake identification in order to get an account created, then it's trivial to just make up a fake name and picture of a person. Forcing people to not be anonymous does nothing to solve a bot problem, and causes a lot of problems. What if that person is gay with a very conservative family that would not accept them? They would be unable to speak how they please with mandatory non-anonymity. Twitter already requires a phone number, prepaid credit cards can be very cheap, and not everyone has utility bills in their names. Many people cannot get drivers licenses. These are great for privileged people, but discriminatory against unprivileged people. I don't think stifling their voices is something we need more of.