5 ms·

If you see misinformation being spread, spread the correction.

by p1esk 6y ago

bmitc 6y ago
It's naïve to think that works.
- p1esk 6y ago
  It's very dangerous to think the way you do, and I'm glad I live in a country where freedom of speech is a fundamental right.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Come now. "Very dangerous to think the way you do?" That's tantamount to wrongthink, and not very pro free-speech of you.
    - p1esk 6y ago
      Yes, I believe it is dangerous to think the way he does. If you believe it's dangerous to think the way I do, fine. Feel free to label it any way you want, wrongthink or whatever. As long as we all are allowed to express our opinions publicly, we will be fine.
      - krapp 6y ago
        >As long as we all are allowed to express our opinions publicly, we will be fine. But then, what's the danger in their way of thinking? Surely you don't believe that a particular idea or form of speech can be inherently harmful? You would be running up against the paradox of tolerance then, which seems to be sympathetic to bmitc's argument.
        p1esk 6y ago
        I believe the way of thinking that Hitler or Lenin pursued was dangerous. However, I don't believe their views should had been censored at the time, or should be censored now. There are things within their views that should not be tolerated though, such as a direct call to kill someone. Or something like saying "bomb" on the airplane. Certain things in certain circumstances override our right to free speech. Spreading lies is not one them, in my opinion.
        krapp 6y ago
        It seems like an arbitrary line in the sand to me. You mention Hitler as an example of dangerous thinking, but of course the culture that led to the Holocaust fed on the spread of lies and conspiracy theory. Lies can do a lot more harm than mere threats, because unlike direct threats, lies can be memetic and self-sustaining, they alter a person's view of reality.
        p1esk 6y ago
        So to prevent a next Hitler, should we censor anyone expressing or spreading dangerous misinformation, or should we publicly point out how dangerous their views are and try to engage in a debate? What else can we do?
        krapp 6y ago
        We can do both. What you and nearly everyone who argues from your point of view fails to concede is that that these are not mutually opposed strategies. It is possible to censor dangerous information without falling down a slippery slope towards arbitrary thought-policing and Orwellian dystopia, or to at least attempt to slow the spread of dangerous misinformation by not allowing it to be normalized or given equal weight to truth, and it is possible to do so while attempting to engage the open-minded few. In a world where the only thing one could do about the next Hitler is politely and civilly ask him and his neo-Nazi cohort for a vigorous series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates, one will be told to get lost while they go on about their business of saturating every platform they can with their propaganda and poisoning the well of public discourse. And then what? Their strategy is more effective than yours. What can you do when your only option can be rendered ineffective simply by ignoring it and mocking it with Facebook memes? You've already lost the battle.
        satyrnein 6y ago
        I think the charitable interpretation is that the parent believes it is dangerous to enact policies based on that way of thinking, not that those thoughts in the abstract are harmful.
        krapp 6y ago
        Everyone with a political opinion wants to enact policies based on that way of thinking. Speech is the medium by which thought becomes policy. These can't be cleanly separated or considered in isolation. Believing that there are potential dangers to enacting certain ideas is not fundamentally different than considering the ideas themselves to be dangerous. After all, that is exactly what people who want racists, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, etc. are worried about - those ideas gaining acceptance and being put into action.
    - bmitc 6y ago
      Apparently it's dangerous to want to understand things and improve the situations we find ourselves in, which is all I suggest we do. This is exactly why the U.S. is headed where it's headed. The U.S. is full of people that blindly think that a group of guys 200-300 years ago somehow landed upon a perfect system that somehow fixes all issues of human emotion and behavior and protects against technological developments like the Internet which they couldn't even fathom at the time, while at the same time not caring that even the system they laid out has been eroded in the interest of consolidating power and corporations.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think it does work. I think most people who don't think it works actually never try. Case in point: this headline. Pointed out in the top voted comment as being misleading. I read the article before looking at the comments and it left me with a good impression of Bill Gates, but if I had just skipped straight to the comments I'd have immediately learned the headline was misleading. The real problems are the huge volume of people who don't engage with "misinformation" as they see it, because they prefer authoritarian control. They think it's easier and more efficient, and don't really consider the possibility of the authorities making mistakes. It's sad to see that Gates is one of these. Take this exchange: The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, “OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.” That is indeed deeply ironic, because "there's just an evil person and that explains all of this" pretty sums up everyone who complains about misinformation on the internet. There's just, for inexplicable reasons, people who spread lies and misinformation claiming scientists and authorities aren't trustworthy, and they just need to be banned from everything to fix it. No deeper analysis of what they're saying is needed. They're just opaquely evil. The lack of understanding is identical on both sides. There are plenty of more credible explanations available, one of the most obvious being that messages get corrupted in transit. People hear things third or fourth hand and the message got garbled along the way. Then instead of targets of these theories standing up and saying, no, these claims are wrong, let's go through them, they just dismiss it all with an eyeroll and demand for surveillance and speech control. In other cases, sometimes those people spreading "misinformation" may actually be straw men, and the real people expressing concern have rather more nuanced views, but it's easier to pick one crazy person and pretend everyone is like that than engage with the actual underlying concerns the larger population has. Interviews like this actually make the problem worse, because a large component of these 'conspiracy theories' is that people like Gates really really like tracking and control. Tech=tracking is after all, a meme pushed very heavily by journalists. So when he rails against encrypted messengers because he believes tech firms should track and control people's speech, he's throwing fuel on the fire by supporting their point, apparently without realising it.
  - tzs 6y ago
    > The real problems are the huge volume of people who don't engage with "misinformation" as they see it, because they prefer authoritarian control ... > Then instead of targets of these theories standing up and saying, no, these claims are wrong, let's go through them Making a convincing lie is orders of magnitude less work than making a convincing refutation of a convincing lie. That dooms approaches such as the ones you are suggesting. Those approaches used to work, when it was expensive to widely and quickly disseminate information so most people only had a few non-local sources. Now, it is close to free and people have dozens or even hundreds of sources and there is a good chance most of the people who saw the lie won't even see the refutation. And by the time the refutation reaches those who will eventually see it, whoever made the lie has had plenty of time to make several more that work around the refutation of the first lie.

If you see misinformation being spread, spread the correction.

by p1esk 6y ago

If you see misinformation being spread, spread the correction.

bmitc 6y ago

It's naïve to think that works.

p1esk 6y ago
It's very dangerous to think the way you do, and I'm glad I live in a country where freedom of speech is a fundamental right.
- krapp 6y ago
  Come now. "Very dangerous to think the way you do?" That's tantamount to wrongthink, and not very pro free-speech of you.
  - p1esk 6y ago
    Yes, I believe it is dangerous to think the way he does. If you believe it's dangerous to think the way I do, fine. Feel free to label it any way you want, wrongthink or whatever. As long as we all are allowed to express our opinions publicly, we will be fine.
    - krapp 6y ago
      >As long as we all are allowed to express our opinions publicly, we will be fine. But then, what's the danger in their way of thinking? Surely you don't believe that a particular idea or form of speech can be inherently harmful? You would be running up against the paradox of tolerance then, which seems to be sympathetic to bmitc's argument.
      - p1esk 6y ago
        I believe the way of thinking that Hitler or Lenin pursued was dangerous. However, I don't believe their views should had been censored at the time, or should be censored now. There are things within their views that should not be tolerated though, such as a direct call to kill someone. Or something like saying "bomb" on the airplane. Certain things in certain circumstances override our right to free speech. Spreading lies is not one them, in my opinion.
        krapp 6y ago
        It seems like an arbitrary line in the sand to me. You mention Hitler as an example of dangerous thinking, but of course the culture that led to the Holocaust fed on the spread of lies and conspiracy theory. Lies can do a lot more harm than mere threats, because unlike direct threats, lies can be memetic and self-sustaining, they alter a person's view of reality.
        p1esk 6y ago
        So to prevent a next Hitler, should we censor anyone expressing or spreading dangerous misinformation, or should we publicly point out how dangerous their views are and try to engage in a debate? What else can we do?
        krapp 6y ago
        We can do both. What you and nearly everyone who argues from your point of view fails to concede is that that these are not mutually opposed strategies. It is possible to censor dangerous information without falling down a slippery slope towards arbitrary thought-policing and Orwellian dystopia, or to at least attempt to slow the spread of dangerous misinformation by not allowing it to be normalized or given equal weight to truth, and it is possible to do so while attempting to engage the open-minded few. In a world where the only thing one could do about the next Hitler is politely and civilly ask him and his neo-Nazi cohort for a vigorous series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates, one will be told to get lost while they go on about their business of saturating every platform they can with their propaganda and poisoning the well of public discourse. And then what? Their strategy is more effective than yours. What can you do when your only option can be rendered ineffective simply by ignoring it and mocking it with Facebook memes? You've already lost the battle.
      - satyrnein 6y ago
        I think the charitable interpretation is that the parent believes it is dangerous to enact policies based on that way of thinking, not that those thoughts in the abstract are harmful.
        krapp 6y ago
        Everyone with a political opinion wants to enact policies based on that way of thinking. Speech is the medium by which thought becomes policy. These can't be cleanly separated or considered in isolation. Believing that there are potential dangers to enacting certain ideas is not fundamentally different than considering the ideas themselves to be dangerous. After all, that is exactly what people who want racists, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, etc. are worried about - those ideas gaining acceptance and being put into action.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    Apparently it's dangerous to want to understand things and improve the situations we find ourselves in, which is all I suggest we do. This is exactly why the U.S. is headed where it's headed. The U.S. is full of people that blindly think that a group of guys 200-300 years ago somehow landed upon a perfect system that somehow fixes all issues of human emotion and behavior and protects against technological developments like the Internet which they couldn't even fathom at the time, while at the same time not caring that even the system they laid out has been eroded in the interest of consolidating power and corporations.
thu2111 6y ago
I think it does work. I think most people who don't think it works actually never try. Case in point: this headline. Pointed out in the top voted comment as being misleading. I read the article before looking at the comments and it left me with a good impression of Bill Gates, but if I had just skipped straight to the comments I'd have immediately learned the headline was misleading. The real problems are the huge volume of people who don't engage with "misinformation" as they see it, because they prefer authoritarian control. They think it's easier and more efficient, and don't really consider the possibility of the authorities making mistakes. It's sad to see that Gates is one of these. Take this exchange: The irony is that it’s digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, “OK, there’s just an evil person, and that explains all of this.” That is indeed deeply ironic, because "there's just an evil person and that explains all of this" pretty sums up everyone who complains about misinformation on the internet. There's just, for inexplicable reasons, people who spread lies and misinformation claiming scientists and authorities aren't trustworthy, and they just need to be banned from everything to fix it. No deeper analysis of what they're saying is needed. They're just opaquely evil. The lack of understanding is identical on both sides. There are plenty of more credible explanations available, one of the most obvious being that messages get corrupted in transit. People hear things third or fourth hand and the message got garbled along the way. Then instead of targets of these theories standing up and saying, no, these claims are wrong, let's go through them, they just dismiss it all with an eyeroll and demand for surveillance and speech control. In other cases, sometimes those people spreading "misinformation" may actually be straw men, and the real people expressing concern have rather more nuanced views, but it's easier to pick one crazy person and pretend everyone is like that than engage with the actual underlying concerns the larger population has. Interviews like this actually make the problem worse, because a large component of these 'conspiracy theories' is that people like Gates really really like tracking and control. Tech=tracking is after all, a meme pushed very heavily by journalists. So when he rails against encrypted messengers because he believes tech firms should track and control people's speech, he's throwing fuel on the fire by supporting their point, apparently without realising it.
- tzs 6y ago
  > The real problems are the huge volume of people who don't engage with "misinformation" as they see it, because they prefer authoritarian control ... > Then instead of targets of these theories standing up and saying, no, these claims are wrong, let's go through them Making a convincing lie is orders of magnitude less work than making a convincing refutation of a convincing lie. That dooms approaches such as the ones you are suggesting. Those approaches used to work, when it was expensive to widely and quickly disseminate information so most people only had a few non-local sources. Now, it is close to free and people have dozens or even hundreds of sources and there is a good chance most of the people who saw the lie won't even see the refutation. And by the time the refutation reaches those who will eventually see it, whoever made the lie has had plenty of time to make several more that work around the refutation of the first lie.