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Yes ... But these are the easy edge cases. It should be trivial (it was trivial) to rebut. The problem is not that there was no evidence Obama was Kenyan, it

Yes ... But these are the easy edge cases. It should be trivial (it was trivial) to rebut. The problem is not that there was no evidence Obama was Kenyan, it's that there were plenty of people who wanted to believe it. Because they did not want a Black president, or because their mental model is so far away from reality that they think it's possible for someone to cheat that huge. Then the issue is not everyone having same facts in front of them - it's everyone being willing to accept facts, and so change their own mental models. And then we are back to politics. Look, I fully support some system of global rebuttal. It will mean no politician can open their mouths without opposition rebuttal - but that's pretty much where we are now in mainstream media. (it's an argument that this is an attraction of online social media - there was no rebuttal (at least no rebuttal that appeared in the same timeline) I am less happy about the idea of FAANG deleting posts - deleting criminal posts is a tough call (which crinalmlaw to use etc), deleting minsinformation - that's a huge open wound But the issue is not misinformation - the issue is fertile ground these posts find. And that is about mental models and that is about changing peoples internal mental models of the world - that is getting others to agree with you and that is human politics - and there is no tech fix for that. That is schools and education and society and diversity and a feeling of belonging and investment in society and shared protection. Surprised the countries with the poor welfare systems have this problem worst? Don't be. Worried about politicians who are always facing rebuttal - just imagine a world where politicians have to treat their statements like scientific publications - we might start getting somewhere !

confidantlake 6y ago
Education was part of it but isn't a silver bullet. I had coworkers that espoused both the 9/11 and the Kenya thing, despite it being easy to rebut. Both were highly educated individuals. https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... makes the case that there is no hard distinction between social problems and tech problems in online communication, the two are intertwined. This medium itself has moderation, if you tried posting either of the above two conspiracies as facts, you would be flagged and downvoted. That is what makes this forum readable instead of a dumpster fire. If Facebook or twitter did the same, I don't see how that would be an open wound. I don't think facebook and twitter owe people the ability to run misinformation campaigns against jewish people, black people, or anyone else. If you want to do that, go post it on your own blog, email someone, or call them. Countries with poor welfare systems are that way in large part because there is propaganda against them. Welfare in the US is painted as communist. Same thing with education.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  I was hoping to be clearer - FAANG absolutely should be tagging misinformation with some label or correction. [x] Its deleting posts that gets sticky. And yes your point about Twitter et al lending people some of their reputation / Google juice is a very underrated part of the problem. But how do we define content moderation rules online? Who sets those rules, where and when do they apply? These are not things to leave to private companies with ad revenue. [x] In fact I think this is too important to leave to tech companies. I would like to see some W3C standard for tagging a URI - that is a distributed comments system where the browser / client SHOULD / MUST show that "in the cloud" there are rebuttals to this statement / position. So the rebuttal is seen where the rebutted is shown. The more views a rebuttal gets the more prominent it is in the list of rebuttals. Yes it will mean everything everywhere has rebuttal but ... that's kind of true anyway. And I like the upthread approach of a common (W3C) distributed moderation (ie a jury of ones randomly selected peers). I think the idea seems workable - but more study is needed :-) Call it the Other Side Protocol.
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    Should HN not define their own content moderation rules? My view is that governments should have some general moderation rules, no death threats, no CP, ect. Sites should be able to have stricter moderation rules, no claiming that Obama was born in Kenya. I personally prefer smaller communities like forums such as this one, slack groups, or other forums, compared to Facebook or twitter. I am not sure how a W3C standard for tagging a URI comment would work. Aren't a lot of URIs not even opinion/fact based things? Like if my uri is a product on Amazon or a piece of sheet music there wouldn't be any rebuttals right? But idk seems interesting, would like to see if it worked.
    - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
      I think there needs to be baseline levels yes - Inwoukd argue that one of these things is that if a platform enables public publishing (still to be defined!) it must have some rebuttal mechanism, and implement some level of censorship (at the criminal level). This means for example I cannot post (in the UK) child porm or threats or hate speech. Dang would have to delete it. But additionally if i post for example that Democrats stole votes from Kent County, HN should have a means for you to flag it, and link that flag to some useful site about how correlations actually work. It would change the nature of HN slightly yes, but it could be done with little impact - I think. But having some floor level of debate seems like a social necessity. PS The Indian issue with WhatsApp a couple of years back makes defining "publish" quite difficult if you can manage to create murderous mobs with opt in messaging systems....

confidantlake 6y ago

Education was part of it but isn't a silver bullet. I had coworkers that espoused both the 9/11 and the Kenya thing, despite it being easy to rebut. Both were highly educated individuals. https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit... makes the case that there is no hard distinction between social problems and tech problems in online communication, the two are intertwined. This medium itself has moderation, if you tried posting either of the above two conspiracies as facts, you would be flagged and downvoted. That is what makes this forum readable instead of a dumpster fire. If Facebook or twitter did the same, I don't see how that would be an open wound. I don't think facebook and twitter owe people the ability to run misinformation campaigns against jewish people, black people, or anyone else. If you want to do that, go post it on your own blog, email someone, or call them. Countries with poor welfare systems are that way in large part because there is propaganda against them. Welfare in the US is painted as communist. Same thing with education.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I was hoping to be clearer - FAANG absolutely should be tagging misinformation with some label or correction. [x] Its deleting posts that gets sticky. And yes your point about Twitter et al lending people some of their reputation / Google juice is a very underrated part of the problem. But how do we define content moderation rules online? Who sets those rules, where and when do they apply? These are not things to leave to private companies with ad revenue. [x] In fact I think this is too important to leave to tech companies. I would like to see some W3C standard for tagging a URI - that is a distributed comments system where the browser / client SHOULD / MUST show that "in the cloud" there are rebuttals to this statement / position. So the rebuttal is seen where the rebutted is shown. The more views a rebuttal gets the more prominent it is in the list of rebuttals. Yes it will mean everything everywhere has rebuttal but ... that's kind of true anyway. And I like the upthread approach of a common (W3C) distributed moderation (ie a jury of ones randomly selected peers). I think the idea seems workable - but more study is needed :-) Call it the Other Side Protocol.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  Should HN not define their own content moderation rules? My view is that governments should have some general moderation rules, no death threats, no CP, ect. Sites should be able to have stricter moderation rules, no claiming that Obama was born in Kenya. I personally prefer smaller communities like forums such as this one, slack groups, or other forums, compared to Facebook or twitter. I am not sure how a W3C standard for tagging a URI comment would work. Aren't a lot of URIs not even opinion/fact based things? Like if my uri is a product on Amazon or a piece of sheet music there wouldn't be any rebuttals right? But idk seems interesting, would like to see if it worked.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    I think there needs to be baseline levels yes - Inwoukd argue that one of these things is that if a platform enables public publishing (still to be defined!) it must have some rebuttal mechanism, and implement some level of censorship (at the criminal level). This means for example I cannot post (in the UK) child porm or threats or hate speech. Dang would have to delete it. But additionally if i post for example that Democrats stole votes from Kent County, HN should have a means for you to flag it, and link that flag to some useful site about how correlations actually work. It would change the nature of HN slightly yes, but it could be done with little impact - I think. But having some floor level of debate seems like a social necessity. PS The Indian issue with WhatsApp a couple of years back makes defining "publish" quite difficult if you can manage to create murderous mobs with opt in messaging systems....