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‘Contextualization Engines’ can fight misinformation without censorship

81 points by laurex 6y ago

unity1001 6y ago
'Authoritative sources' gave us the Iraqi WMDs lie and pushed it for 8 years~. Government officials, intelligence officials, major media outlets, major mainstream journalists included. I dont need any fight against misinformation fueled by such 'authoritative sources'. Last time, it resulted in 1 million deaths, destruction of a country and creation of ISIS.
- briantakita 6y ago
  Careful. Many people will claim that you think "wrong"...As in how dare you think critically about "authoritative" sources. "Author" is also the root word of "authoritarian". "Authors" also create "narratives" to influence the hearts & minds of the audience, presumably for the benefit of the "author". And how does one become one of these "authors"? Nonetheless, this sort of tech can also be used for "good", as in providing a resource of a variety of different good faith takes on a certain subject so the reader is empowered to understand that nuance of a subject from different perspectives. Since this tech will be used to empower the "authors", we might as well make tech that empowers the audience to move beyond being passive programmable consumers of information. Rather the audience can become the active "author" of their own lives, philosophy, & perspective.
- lstamour 6y ago
  I’m not sure that argument holds up against a system like this. Who says the context has to be one-sided? It can still be authoritative. If anything, this highlights the apparent need for such an engine if it can appropriately source such statements to provide additional context to otherwise one-sided pieces. For example: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/02/24/sprj.irq.memo/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/02/24/sprj.irq.memo/index.htm... > (CNN) -- France, Russia and Germany submitted a memorandum to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on Monday that was meant to counter a proposed resolution backed by the United States, Britain and Spain that would declare that Iraq has missed its last chance to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction. The following is the text of that memorandum: > 1. Full and effective disarmament in accordance with the relevant UNSC resolutions remains the imperative objective of the international community. Our priority should be to achieve this peacefully through the inspection regime. The military option should only be a last resort. So far, the conditions for using force against Iraq are not fulfilled: > • While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field; > • Inspections have just reached their full pace; they are functioning without hindrance; they have already produced results; > • While not yet fully satisfactory, Iraqi co-operation is improving, as mentioned by the chief inspectors in their last report.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    At the time, the phrase I remember most was “A coalition of the willing,” in reference to countries who found either agreement or benefit in going along with the US plan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing And even at the time popular opinion was that Afghanistan was a mess but at least related to the attacks of 9/11, but Iraq was seen as a continuation of Bush Sr’s war, it was seen as political. If in hindsight it didn’t look like it was reported on that way, that was as much a failing of certain newspapers—internationally, I can say there were many opinions. A contextual system would have picked up on different contexts from different regions perhaps. Perhaps it could go two or three layers deep, so you can evaluate both surface opinions, interests of the writer, of the publisher and of the speaker or subject of the piece. Of course, it is much harder to place statements in context in real-time when information is often missing or partially withheld, but even a system that had a lag in context, or could follow up to provide more context in future might be a useful system. It would help correct misconceptions: shocking lies often spread faster than less shocking truths…
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > place statements in context I've studied those wars in some detail, and had decades to read followup news on them. It would be fair to say the US public was misled about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But looking at those wars in context, I don't think there were alternatives besides doing early, successful attacks on the leaders involved (Hussein, OBL, etc.), which didn't happen. Hussein wanted to be the new Suleiman, and conquer the entire Middle East, and OBL likewise. The biggest regret is that American distraction there allowed the CCP to quietly build into a very dangerous superpower. While the USSR was mostly inward-focused during the Cold War, the CCP is challenging the US on the global stage. According to Dr. VDH, 75% of the time when there is a new rising power, there is war. My estimate is this will happen in the next 24 months.
    - unity1001 6y ago
      Indeed. Despite all the 'evidence' (lying) in UN, and 'opinion shaping' by Angloamerican corporate media, US wasnt able to get a UN resolution to invade Iraq. So it just went ahead and did it ILLEGALLY, through a 'coalition of the willing'. ie its satellites. ... Any system that uses 'authoritative' sources would not only be gamed, but also the establishments would never let any opposing source have any authority to challenge the narrative of its own. A good example of this is how US is using the existence of conspiracy theories in social media as a means to pressure social media to remove not only conspiracy theories, but also any source which opposes US foreign policy. ~60 year independent anti-war outlets who function with reader donations, the outlets which opposed and exposed Vietnam war, other war crimes etc are labeled as 'conspiracy sites', 'Foreign propaganda' and lumped in with sites which propagate flat earth theories to get them pushed down in algorithms. Courtesy of John McCain, then acting leader of the US military-industry complex, who started that witch hunt.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > ‘Authoritative sources’ gave us the Iraqi WMDs lie and pushed it for 8 years~ No, they didn’t, at least not anything close to exclusively. Authoritative sources debunked it nearly in realtime. This was particularly true of the Winnebagos of Mass Destruction, where the fact that they weren’t want the US/UK were saying that they were, and that the US/UK new that they weren’t because the UK, with US knowledge, sold them to Iraq, with detailed background, was reported in major media before the US presentation to the UN. Which meeting was also carried live on major media, and including UN weapons inspectors debunking claims made by the US in that presentation immediately after the US made them. Yes, Judith Miller existed, but there were lots of prominent contrary reports. And of course, even when they were debunked in the same article, the fact that the US government made particular claims was itself prominent news. People who only saw the government claims, who read that as the major media endorsing the claims, and who only saw pro-administration “independent” reporting like Miller’s and not the other side didn’t see things that way because that’s all their was, but because that’s what they wanted to see, for one kind or another of confirmation bias (whether it was only seeing the reporting that reinforced their preconceived notions about the ground facts, or only seeing the reporting that reinforced their preconceived notions about the media.)
  - briantakita 6y ago
    What "authoritative sources debunked it nearly in realtime"? If these sources were authoritative, why did the corporate media & the US government (e.g. State Dept) beat the drums of regime change? Why did we go to war? It sounds like the "authoritative sources" were all in on the war. You can say that there were "contradictory reports", but in shaping public opinion, what matters is what is shown & the narrative presented to the public. These "contradictory reports" you mentioned were buried under enormous heaps of propaganda. What is to stop the "authors" of the "authoritative sources" from burying the "contradictory reports" on contemporary issues? In short, it's about power. Whoever has the power determines the narrative coming from the "authoritative sources". Whoever has the power is incentivized to further their own interests to maintain their power. The "author's" narrative, under the pretense of truth & whatever else justifies the authority, sole purpose is to shape public opinion to further strengthen the "author's" hold on power.
InfiniteRand 6y ago
There’s no reason such a contextualization engine would need a singular source of authoritative information, rather I think it would be useful as a tool to be configurable against the sources that the reader trusts or a set of sources backed by an organization the reader trusts. One key thing would be to adjust the the authoritative-ness of different sources based on the local context of individual parts of text. For instance a paragraph of an article might have references to psychology and to history, I would generally trust very different people to give authoritative information about those topics. This gets trickier when dealing with topics that blur the boundaries or combine different fields. Obviously you could just show more and more information but at some point that overwhelms the reader. In any case this would not solve misinformation, but a key thing it would help with is dumb misinformation. Little fibs that could be easily disproven if checked but the reader does not have any indication to do that checking. For instance someone claims to be a professor at Harvard, let’s look that up. Ideally the frequency of the dumb misinformation can clue the reader to the fact there might be some smart disinformation there. But sometimes people are careful about the simple stuff in disinformation, and sometimes people are writing honestly but are just wrong.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  Interesting, sounds hard but question about one part: > rather I think it would be useful as a tool to be configurable against the sources that the reader trusts or a set of sources backed by an organization the reader trusts. What if the only sources they trust are QAnon people or something? It seems like your way would just reinforce bubbles. I may have an alternative. What if organizations had an epistemological policy similar to a privacy policy? I think it woild be fine for them to be opiniinated about what sources they choose as long as it is not allowed to be arbitrarily varying, is communicated clearly and content is verifiable against it.
mckoss 6y ago
We need software to tell us when we should be outraged by a tweet.
imwillofficial 6y ago
The headline brings up this thought: I find the recent rise in the use of "missinformation" very Orwellian. The very authorities that have failed to keep our personal data safe from abuse by big tech, failed to keep lead out of our water, failed to stop giving banks our money when they fuck up, failed to properly keep the pandemic under control, and countless other massive failures of leadership, are to be trusted in managing the flow of information? I remember a few years back during one of the government shutdowns, a volunteer was mowing the lawn of the national mall because they couldn't pay the grounds keepers. I think our "authoritative sources", from the media, to the government have failed us at every level. I do not trust their definitions of "missinformation" to be anything but self serving.
tpoacher 6y ago
Contextualization Engines described in a single comic strip: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KcaUTcaA_xk/TiHCK4inQhI/AAAAAAAAAH4/q-9xJu9kT4k/s1600/Calvin+and+Hobbes+-+Photography+-+vertical.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KcaUTcaA_xk/TiHCK4inQhI/AAAAAAAAAH...
krasicki 6y ago
I think a great test case for these contextualization engines might be to parse a few years of MSNBC coverage of Trump's administration and look for balanced, accurate reporting of -cough- facts. Ditto with any MSM publication, Washington Times, Fox news, New York Times,... This is a fool's errand and the queue of fool's volunteering their expertise is staggering.
motohagiography 6y ago
Interesting that it's possible, but it's probably not ethical to misdirect people about the intent of this. Some people experience what we might see as misinformation as their culture and identity, and pretending we aren't building technologies to detect and exterminate it is pretty dodgy. Unless we think these tools will only ever be in the hands of 'good' people? Being able to detect the tribal flavor of information so that you can filter it out is what got us into this mess in the first place because it indexed on creating outrage bubbles for clicks. Growth comes from opportunity, which usually comes from something being shitty, so militating and cleansing the world of badness isn't doing anyone any favors except consolidating the role of the cleaners. When you ask the question, "whose contextualization engine?" and the whole premise falls apart, it becomes clear they have earned any mockery these engines are designed to sheild them from.
- toss1 6y ago
  When your "culture and identity" is based on relying on blatant disinformation, whether it is that the earth is flat, the govt is poisoning you with chemtrails, or NASA is fake, that is already getting corrossive to society. When it extends to anti-vaccine disinformation, it is an active threat not only to public health but national security. Many of these types of disinformation are actively weaponized and spread by adversaries. It is right to threat those kinds of threats to the society and nation as we would treat any physical threat -- actively work to neutralize it. Just because war is moving out of the physical and into the information sphere, does not make it less serious.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    You're clearly an information warrior, but what if I think that you're the one spreading misleading information? It's weird that you fully expect that you, or someone else who agrees with you, will be in control of this.
    - toss1 6y ago
      Whether you think that I'm spreading disinformation, or whether it is someone else is easily determined by looking to the external facts. The fact is that the earth is (nearly) round, contrails are not chemical sprays, Capricorn One was a C-grade movie while Apollo-11 went to the moon, and that anti-vax movement was started by a fraud attempting to discredit existing formulas to promote a formula in which the paper's author had a vested interest (and which paper was retracted, along with his MD and license) and that vaccines do work. That is the point. A society cannot remain cohesive if there are no shared truths. You may not want to take it seriously, but I'd suggest you consider the following quotes, and why and how disinformation can be weaponized. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.". ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
ketzo 6y ago
For such a long piece, this is disappointingly light on any details or discussion about how one would go about building a "Contextualization Engine." I mean, we all saw what happened with Microsoft's Tay Bot [1] -- any system that attempts to factor in user input is ripe for abuse. Who would control what context is valid, and what context is discarded? If you decide to factor in "all" content, how do you rank it? Is it simply a factor of popularity, or are trusted sources given more weight? Who is a trusted source? I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic: I agree with the author that context is the biggest thing lacking from the internet today, and is a valuable tool for fighting misinformation. But any discussion like this needs to pretty immediately grapple with the intricacies of how to implement context -- and what context really is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Sounded like it was mainly reliant on some pre-selected whitelist of approved sources. Of course that raises the question of who approved those sources, and what were their motivations?
amalcon 6y ago
Let's suppose I am Google. I am in arguably the best position in the world to build this system, because I have PageRank. PageRank is (for the sake of argument) the closest thing yet invented to an unbiased measure of authoritativeness (though still not that close). I also have the most comprehensive map of the Web ever made, because that's the input to PageRank. I could imagine building a contextualization machine out of this. Oversimplified version: Look for cases where an authoritative link frequently appears next to a link to the page in need of context, and surface those authoritative links. The good news / problem is that you can already use google this way. If you google a given URL, you'll get results of people talking about it! E.g. the current top article on HN is: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/ios-14-5-offers-unlock-iphone-with-apple-watch-diverse-siri-voices-and-more/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/ios-14-5-offers-unloc... If I google this, I get a Reddit thread discussing this, two misses (MacRumors frontpage and a CNBC index page), and a Korean page. The last might be fine, but I can't read it so I don't know. Maybe the Apple announcement is just too new, but this doesn't seem super useful. Of course, maybe there are refinements one could make for this use case. Maybe this technique is just more useful for political or science topics. I don't know. I tend to doubt it, though.
- ergot_vacation 6y ago
  The problem of course is that a certain crowd runs most large sites, and as seen on Youtube, if things they dislike become too popular they will do whatever they can to suppress that popularity. Put another way, there are two definitions of "Authoritative": what does the raw data suggest, and what does the echo chamber I've surrounded myself with and become convinced is reality say. I think we all know which standard would be used if such a system was implemented (and of course, it's already been attempted in small ways).
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  I agree that Pagerank and its derivatives are enormously valuable, but a disadvantage is that the graph isn't exposed, only an ordered list of search results. Even if you leave aside the issue of this being weighted by known user preferences, it's akin to trying to understand the structure of a tree by looking at a handful of leaves.
marcodiego 6y ago
There is something that can fight misinformation without censorship: a mix a culture + education. Scientific method, critical thing, logic, statistics coupled with a bunch of historical examples of non-intuitive results and demonstrating situations where correlation does not implies causation should be teach on schools repeatedly and from early age. Most adults don't even know what a double blind study is. It is not surprising that so many people are falling prey to covid quackery.
barbazoo 6y ago
Education, to me, seems like the perfect way to "fight misinformation without censorship". Teach our kids how to read, how to understand, how to contextualize and think critically. We don't need big tech to come up with a solution to a problem that big tech caused to some degree.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  This misses the problem. At each education level there is a different set of causes that leads to misinformation spread. At low-IQs is resistance to thinking as such; at high-IQs its, typically, marginalization from society and motivated thinking. Across the mid-range its lack of meaning, contentment, emotional stability. It's not really an education problem. The high-IQs are hyper-critical thinkers; the low-IQs arent ever going to be. The issue is trust in institutions, as most knowledge is just a function of trust; and secondly, a sense of meaning, inclusion and purpose for many.
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    I agree that knowledge is connected to trust. So what happened, we don't trust our institutions, schools, government, anymore and all of a sudden we believe every dumb thing we see on Facebook? > a sense of meaning, inclusion and purpose for many I think you're right, that IS crucial as well. I often feel that I'm so content with how my own life is going that I neither have the time nor interest to marginalize a certain group, hate another, feel superior to immigrants or whatever. No matter how much Fox news or CNN I read or watch (which I don't do much at all).
    - mjburgess 6y ago
      > So what happened, we don't trust our institutions, schools, government, anymore and all of a sudden we believe every dumb thing we see on Facebook? Yes.
- narag 6y ago
  I agree but you also need to teach them that neither side of the political divide is right on everything. Good luck getting support for that.
keiferski 6y ago
I don’t think many people working in tech understand the nature of the Internet when it comes to information. The cat is out of the bag and there is no returning to a world of universal “authoritative sources” (term used in the article.) Framed historically, we are experiencing a similar situation to the invention of the printing press. All attempts to reel in “misinformation” by appealing to legacy media outlets are doomed to fail, precisely because these outlets have lost the trust they once had. I don’t see them regaining it in the near future, if at all. Instead, the likely outcome is a constellation of reputation-based media sources. “Joe Brown is always honest, so I’ll see what he says in his podcast” is probably the future source of information for the average person. Fact checkers will never be anything other than a biased opinion of a particular institution, as been shown time and time again.
- noofen 6y ago
  Has anyone considered that the "rise of misinformation" and Qanon-type conspiracy discourse is just a symptom of elite and institutional decadence?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I haven’t really followed the Q-Anon thing well enough to know much about it, but it definitely does strike me as a consequence of institutional decadence. I’m not sure the content of the conspiracy is actually relevant. Most people want to trust the information they’re told, so the popularity of such things does seem like a symptom and not a cause.
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    elite and institutional decadence What does that mean? I googled "institutional decadence" but am still not clear on the definition. Could you give some examples of elite and institutional decadence?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Not the OP, but this just refers to the gradual erosion of many institutions in American society. Universities, media, political structures, etc. have all lost the trust of the populace over the last ~30 years, if not longer. Whether this is from an actual lowering of standards or just an inevitable consequence of new media is a different question. I’d suggest reading works by a critic named John Simon for the former opinion.
tryonenow 6y ago
>Systems built specifically for contextualization might not only support media literacy; they could also provide the data needed for fact-checkers to determine what to focus on, and could even help support the emotional literacy relevant to avoid harmful reactions to misinformation (from lashing out at loved ones, to terrorist radicalization). All I'm hearing is techno-authoritarians building a system to further suppress dissenting views. Even "authoritative" sources are supposed to disagree; that's how science works. I think the uncertain nature of reality is such that any "authoritative" source is likely to eventually make mistakes, and building rigid systems to hide alternative viewpoints is a form of social disenfranchisement.
the_lonely_road 6y ago
I spent a good amount of time trying to build a contextualization engine for a different reason (auto correct, sick to death of it being so bad when I'm clearly talking in a very specific context bubble using these same words that everyone else is using over and over), and man can I say that is is extremely difficult to get 5 people in a room to not define 5 different context buckets for a specific piece of text in a given situation. In the end I decided that the real world phenomenon I was trying to model was probably closer to a Google+ multiple identifies than it was to a single channel like Facebook.
standardUser 6y ago
This already exists. Unless I am missing something, we've already been seeing these on major platforms like Facebook and Instagram (if not others) for at least a year now. I've noticed it mostly on posts about the 2020 election and COVID-19 facts/news. I mostly like the approach. It seems like the least restrictive and least objectionable solution (or partial solution) to an incredibly tricky and important problem.
- JI00912 6y ago
  I maybe misunderstanding this post, but Facebook information about covid and the last us election has been terrible.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    I'm talking specifically about the little info blurbs that Facebook automatically attaches to posts about COVID. They are links to factual information. I'm not talking about information that other people share about COVID on Facebook.
adamrezich 6y ago
whenever I hear talk about "creating context" with regards to the vast amounts of conflicting information on the Internet, I can't help but recall the infamous scene near the end of 2001's Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, wherein protagonist Raiden talks to an AI that has kind of actually been behind everything up to this point (keeping in mind that this game was released long before the modern social media-oriented Web) (emphasis mine): --- AI: The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century. As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us. We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself. But there are things not covered by genetic information. [...] Human memories, ideas. Culture. History. Genes don't contain any record of human history. Is it something that should not be passed on? Should that information be left at the mercy of nature? We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books... But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really. That's what history is [...] But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander... All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution. Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship. Raiden: Are you telling me it's not!? AI: You're being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. Raiden: Create context? AI: The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you. Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans. Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims. Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing. "Be nice to other people." "But beat out the competition!" "You're special." "Believe in yourself and you will succeed." But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed... You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth." And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. We're trying to stop that from happening. It's our responsibility as rulers. Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out to stimulate the evolution of the species. Raiden: And you think you're qualified to decide what's necessary and not? AI: Absolutely. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations? That's what it means to create context. --- pretty prophetic for a 2001 video game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0
giantg2 6y ago
"The contextualization engine compares the content being shared with that from authoritative sources and provides articles or other media results that are sufficiently related." How are these authoritative sources chosen? This sounds like it would be rife for manipulation. Plus, just relying on an appeal to authority as the validation of the information will not weed out mistakes or errors in the content. What are the standards for these other media results it will provide? News articles, blogs, studies, etc. Some might be better than others depending on the topic. The news and journalists are supposed to be the old school contextual engine. How do we see an automated version being any better quality?
- Fellshard 6y ago
  It already is. Watch the Twitter 'trending' pane over time, and you'll notice that they add context in exactly one worldview direction, incurring massive editorialized anchor bias.
- ergot_vacation 6y ago
  Exactly. The fundamental problem with the phrase "misinformation" is that what is or isn't "misinformation" is subjective. Truth and reality aren't subjective, but people's beliefs about the nature of them are, very much so. It's impossible to solve the problem by asking "The Experts" to adjudicate what is and isn't true, because The Experts have become too mired in corruption, greed, political intimidation and so on. They no longer represent anything even close to an impartial party, and thus are not useful tools for discerning reality anymore, at least in the traditional way of asking a question, getting an answer and accepting it.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    There is no group "The Experts". This is just a conspiratorial populism in disguise. Ah yes, The People, really know. They aren't corrupt. Oh wait! It's The People sharing, liking, and subscribing to batshit. The People are corrupt, greedy, stupid. There is no utopian solution; the worst is to leave The People to their own devices.
  - apostacy 6y ago
drngdds 6y ago
Why would this be any more trusted than the misinformation warnings Youtube and Twitter already put up automatically for certain subjects? And also, I don't know how anyone can even float the possibility of making something like this a legal requirement. The ways it could be abused are really obvious.
Sophistifunk 6y ago
Why is it that everybody suddenly thinks they should get to decide what's "misinformation" for everybody else? Who gets to decide? Tech companies built on surveillance and manipulation of people for engagement and advertising? The state, with all its history of mistreating various groups of citizens, and constant propaganda? The media, who have recently abandoned even the pretence of honestly reporting on, rather than trying to steer, political winds? None of these institutions can be trusted, therefore the idea of "controlling misinformation" itself is anathema to a free society.
- titzer 6y ago
  > therefore the idea of "controlling misinformation" itself is anathema to a free society. Have you ever considered that maybe "free societies" have never really existed, or maybe if they have, they might have vulnerabilities that cause them to taken over by misinformation, cults, and psychotic megalomaniacs, and destroy themselves? Because this is the question that some of us are honestly wrestling with. Society doesn't look super stable right now, and it's not because there's too little freedom of information. You can tune into whatever brand of crazy turns your crank and absolutely disappear into it. The echo chambers are numerous and labyrinthine. There's just too many nutjobs out there sucking down propaganda and there's too many nutjobs producing it. Societies, like people, can become mentally deranged. Nobody really knows what to do in that case, but in general it doesn't end pretty.
  - textgel 6y ago
    No, the threat at the moment is coming from malicious actors claiming that the sky is falling and that they are the ones who can protect you from it if you'll just give them the power to rule. Those advocating for this have been shown to consistently have both a history and an ideology built on lying and making efforts to hurt people. I'm grateful to see the kickback against those who would be cheering on book burning during the 1900s.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  > media, who have recently abandoned even the pretence of honestly reporting on, rather than trying to steer, political winds? This has been going on for a long time. The media has been doing this as long as there has been media. There's probably just a pretty good chance that your personal preferences were fairly well reflected in the Northeast centric, government institution trusting, upper middle class value holding, media establishment. IMO, as someone whose views were rarely reflected there and rarely saw questions asked that I'd like asked, I feel we're much better off. News organizations are being more clear about their biases (intentionally or not) and there is a much better variety of news.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Can’t work because ‘garbage in garbage out’. We see media photographers gathered around the one burning trash can to sell a narrative. When most of the media is owned by billionaires, how could it possibly be any other way?
mursicale 6y ago
" by providing a place for users to optionally access context and authoritative speech when they want it. This means that such functionality could even be required by law, just as nutrition facts are for foods. It might be required for all messaging and social media apps over a certain size, built into operating systems, or mandated through Apple App and Google Play stores." "Oi do you have a loicense for that decontextualized piece of information?"
thro1 6y ago
How to decide what's misinformation, authoritative ? - being able to choose which arbitrary sources(users) to trust you could see how everything looks like from specific POV's - or just stay in your bubble: www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html The computation of the trust metric is performed relative to a "seed" of trusted accounts. Wikipedia says the trust metric on Advogato was designed to include all individuals who could reasonably be considered members of the Free Software and Open Source communities while excluding others. "The Advogato trust metric is not attack-resistant" "Lessons From Advogato (on reputation systems)"
OnlyRepliesToBS 6y ago
'misinformation'

81 points by laurex 6y ago

'Authoritative sources' gave us the Iraqi WMDs lie and pushed it for 8 years~. Government officials, intelligence officials, major media outlets, major mainstream journalists included. I dont need any fight against misinformation fueled by such 'authoritative sources'. Last time, it resulted in 1 million deaths, destruction of a country and creation of ISIS.

briantakita 6y ago
Careful. Many people will claim that you think "wrong"...As in how dare you think critically about "authoritative" sources. "Author" is also the root word of "authoritarian". "Authors" also create "narratives" to influence the hearts & minds of the audience, presumably for the benefit of the "author". And how does one become one of these "authors"? Nonetheless, this sort of tech can also be used for "good", as in providing a resource of a variety of different good faith takes on a certain subject so the reader is empowered to understand that nuance of a subject from different perspectives. Since this tech will be used to empower the "authors", we might as well make tech that empowers the audience to move beyond being passive programmable consumers of information. Rather the audience can become the active "author" of their own lives, philosophy, & perspective.
lstamour 6y ago
I’m not sure that argument holds up against a system like this. Who says the context has to be one-sided? It can still be authoritative. If anything, this highlights the apparent need for such an engine if it can appropriately source such statements to provide additional context to otherwise one-sided pieces. For example: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/02/24/sprj.irq.memo/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/02/24/sprj.irq.memo/index.htm... > (CNN) -- France, Russia and Germany submitted a memorandum to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on Monday that was meant to counter a proposed resolution backed by the United States, Britain and Spain that would declare that Iraq has missed its last chance to disarm itself of weapons of mass destruction. The following is the text of that memorandum: > 1. Full and effective disarmament in accordance with the relevant UNSC resolutions remains the imperative objective of the international community. Our priority should be to achieve this peacefully through the inspection regime. The military option should only be a last resort. So far, the conditions for using force against Iraq are not fulfilled: > • While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field; > • Inspections have just reached their full pace; they are functioning without hindrance; they have already produced results; > • While not yet fully satisfactory, Iraqi co-operation is improving, as mentioned by the chief inspectors in their last report.
- lstamour 6y ago
  At the time, the phrase I remember most was “A coalition of the willing,” in reference to countries who found either agreement or benefit in going along with the US plan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing And even at the time popular opinion was that Afghanistan was a mess but at least related to the attacks of 9/11, but Iraq was seen as a continuation of Bush Sr’s war, it was seen as political. If in hindsight it didn’t look like it was reported on that way, that was as much a failing of certain newspapers—internationally, I can say there were many opinions. A contextual system would have picked up on different contexts from different regions perhaps. Perhaps it could go two or three layers deep, so you can evaluate both surface opinions, interests of the writer, of the publisher and of the speaker or subject of the piece. Of course, it is much harder to place statements in context in real-time when information is often missing or partially withheld, but even a system that had a lag in context, or could follow up to provide more context in future might be a useful system. It would help correct misconceptions: shocking lies often spread faster than less shocking truths…
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > place statements in context I've studied those wars in some detail, and had decades to read followup news on them. It would be fair to say the US public was misled about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But looking at those wars in context, I don't think there were alternatives besides doing early, successful attacks on the leaders involved (Hussein, OBL, etc.), which didn't happen. Hussein wanted to be the new Suleiman, and conquer the entire Middle East, and OBL likewise. The biggest regret is that American distraction there allowed the CCP to quietly build into a very dangerous superpower. While the USSR was mostly inward-focused during the Cold War, the CCP is challenging the US on the global stage. According to Dr. VDH, 75% of the time when there is a new rising power, there is war. My estimate is this will happen in the next 24 months.
  - unity1001 6y ago
    Indeed. Despite all the 'evidence' (lying) in UN, and 'opinion shaping' by Angloamerican corporate media, US wasnt able to get a UN resolution to invade Iraq. So it just went ahead and did it ILLEGALLY, through a 'coalition of the willing'. ie its satellites. ... Any system that uses 'authoritative' sources would not only be gamed, but also the establishments would never let any opposing source have any authority to challenge the narrative of its own. A good example of this is how US is using the existence of conspiracy theories in social media as a means to pressure social media to remove not only conspiracy theories, but also any source which opposes US foreign policy. ~60 year independent anti-war outlets who function with reader donations, the outlets which opposed and exposed Vietnam war, other war crimes etc are labeled as 'conspiracy sites', 'Foreign propaganda' and lumped in with sites which propagate flat earth theories to get them pushed down in algorithms. Courtesy of John McCain, then acting leader of the US military-industry complex, who started that witch hunt.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> ‘Authoritative sources’ gave us the Iraqi WMDs lie and pushed it for 8 years~ No, they didn’t, at least not anything close to exclusively. Authoritative sources debunked it nearly in realtime. This was particularly true of the Winnebagos of Mass Destruction, where the fact that they weren’t want the US/UK were saying that they were, and that the US/UK new that they weren’t because the UK, with US knowledge, sold them to Iraq, with detailed background, was reported in major media before the US presentation to the UN. Which meeting was also carried live on major media, and including UN weapons inspectors debunking claims made by the US in that presentation immediately after the US made them. Yes, Judith Miller existed, but there were lots of prominent contrary reports. And of course, even when they were debunked in the same article, the fact that the US government made particular claims was itself prominent news. People who only saw the government claims, who read that as the major media endorsing the claims, and who only saw pro-administration “independent” reporting like Miller’s and not the other side didn’t see things that way because that’s all their was, but because that’s what they wanted to see, for one kind or another of confirmation bias (whether it was only seeing the reporting that reinforced their preconceived notions about the ground facts, or only seeing the reporting that reinforced their preconceived notions about the media.)
- briantakita 6y ago
  What "authoritative sources debunked it nearly in realtime"? If these sources were authoritative, why did the corporate media & the US government (e.g. State Dept) beat the drums of regime change? Why did we go to war? It sounds like the "authoritative sources" were all in on the war. You can say that there were "contradictory reports", but in shaping public opinion, what matters is what is shown & the narrative presented to the public. These "contradictory reports" you mentioned were buried under enormous heaps of propaganda. What is to stop the "authors" of the "authoritative sources" from burying the "contradictory reports" on contemporary issues? In short, it's about power. Whoever has the power determines the narrative coming from the "authoritative sources". Whoever has the power is incentivized to further their own interests to maintain their power. The "author's" narrative, under the pretense of truth & whatever else justifies the authority, sole purpose is to shape public opinion to further strengthen the "author's" hold on power.

InfiniteRand 6y ago

There’s no reason such a contextualization engine would need a singular source of authoritative information, rather I think it would be useful as a tool to be configurable against the sources that the reader trusts or a set of sources backed by an organization the reader trusts. One key thing would be to adjust the the authoritative-ness of different sources based on the local context of individual parts of text. For instance a paragraph of an article might have references to psychology and to history, I would generally trust very different people to give authoritative information about those topics. This gets trickier when dealing with topics that blur the boundaries or combine different fields. Obviously you could just show more and more information but at some point that overwhelms the reader. In any case this would not solve misinformation, but a key thing it would help with is dumb misinformation. Little fibs that could be easily disproven if checked but the reader does not have any indication to do that checking. For instance someone claims to be a professor at Harvard, let’s look that up. Ideally the frequency of the dumb misinformation can clue the reader to the fact there might be some smart disinformation there. But sometimes people are careful about the simple stuff in disinformation, and sometimes people are writing honestly but are just wrong.

guerrilla 6y ago
Interesting, sounds hard but question about one part: > rather I think it would be useful as a tool to be configurable against the sources that the reader trusts or a set of sources backed by an organization the reader trusts. What if the only sources they trust are QAnon people or something? It seems like your way would just reinforce bubbles. I may have an alternative. What if organizations had an epistemological policy similar to a privacy policy? I think it woild be fine for them to be opiniinated about what sources they choose as long as it is not allowed to be arbitrarily varying, is communicated clearly and content is verifiable against it.

mckoss 6y ago

We need software to tell us when we should be outraged by a tweet.

imwillofficial 6y ago

The headline brings up this thought: I find the recent rise in the use of "missinformation" very Orwellian. The very authorities that have failed to keep our personal data safe from abuse by big tech, failed to keep lead out of our water, failed to stop giving banks our money when they fuck up, failed to properly keep the pandemic under control, and countless other massive failures of leadership, are to be trusted in managing the flow of information? I remember a few years back during one of the government shutdowns, a volunteer was mowing the lawn of the national mall because they couldn't pay the grounds keepers. I think our "authoritative sources", from the media, to the government have failed us at every level. I do not trust their definitions of "missinformation" to be anything but self serving.

tpoacher 6y ago

Contextualization Engines described in a single comic strip: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KcaUTcaA_xk/TiHCK4inQhI/AAAAAAAAAH4/q-9xJu9kT4k/s1600/Calvin+and+Hobbes+-+Photography+-+vertical.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KcaUTcaA_xk/TiHCK4inQhI/AAAAAAAAAH...

krasicki 6y ago

I think a great test case for these contextualization engines might be to parse a few years of MSNBC coverage of Trump's administration and look for balanced, accurate reporting of -cough- facts. Ditto with any MSM publication, Washington Times, Fox news, New York Times,... This is a fool's errand and the queue of fool's volunteering their expertise is staggering.

motohagiography 6y ago

Interesting that it's possible, but it's probably not ethical to misdirect people about the intent of this. Some people experience what we might see as misinformation as their culture and identity, and pretending we aren't building technologies to detect and exterminate it is pretty dodgy. Unless we think these tools will only ever be in the hands of 'good' people? Being able to detect the tribal flavor of information so that you can filter it out is what got us into this mess in the first place because it indexed on creating outrage bubbles for clicks. Growth comes from opportunity, which usually comes from something being shitty, so militating and cleansing the world of badness isn't doing anyone any favors except consolidating the role of the cleaners. When you ask the question, "whose contextualization engine?" and the whole premise falls apart, it becomes clear they have earned any mockery these engines are designed to sheild them from.

toss1 6y ago
When your "culture and identity" is based on relying on blatant disinformation, whether it is that the earth is flat, the govt is poisoning you with chemtrails, or NASA is fake, that is already getting corrossive to society. When it extends to anti-vaccine disinformation, it is an active threat not only to public health but national security. Many of these types of disinformation are actively weaponized and spread by adversaries. It is right to threat those kinds of threats to the society and nation as we would treat any physical threat -- actively work to neutralize it. Just because war is moving out of the physical and into the information sphere, does not make it less serious.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  You're clearly an information warrior, but what if I think that you're the one spreading misleading information? It's weird that you fully expect that you, or someone else who agrees with you, will be in control of this.
  - toss1 6y ago
    Whether you think that I'm spreading disinformation, or whether it is someone else is easily determined by looking to the external facts. The fact is that the earth is (nearly) round, contrails are not chemical sprays, Capricorn One was a C-grade movie while Apollo-11 went to the moon, and that anti-vax movement was started by a fraud attempting to discredit existing formulas to promote a formula in which the paper's author had a vested interest (and which paper was retracted, along with his MD and license) and that vaccines do work. That is the point. A society cannot remain cohesive if there are no shared truths. You may not want to take it seriously, but I'd suggest you consider the following quotes, and why and how disinformation can be weaponized. “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.". ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

ketzo 6y ago

For such a long piece, this is disappointingly light on any details or discussion about how one would go about building a "Contextualization Engine." I mean, we all saw what happened with Microsoft's Tay Bot [1] -- any system that attempts to factor in user input is ripe for abuse. Who would control what context is valid, and what context is discarded? If you decide to factor in "all" content, how do you rank it? Is it simply a factor of popularity, or are trusted sources given more weight? Who is a trusted source? I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic: I agree with the author that context is the biggest thing lacking from the internet today, and is a valuable tool for fighting misinformation. But any discussion like this needs to pretty immediately grapple with the intricacies of how to implement context -- and what context really is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)

throwawayboise 6y ago
Sounded like it was mainly reliant on some pre-selected whitelist of approved sources. Of course that raises the question of who approved those sources, and what were their motivations?

amalcon 6y ago

Let's suppose I am Google. I am in arguably the best position in the world to build this system, because I have PageRank. PageRank is (for the sake of argument) the closest thing yet invented to an unbiased measure of authoritativeness (though still not that close). I also have the most comprehensive map of the Web ever made, because that's the input to PageRank. I could imagine building a contextualization machine out of this. Oversimplified version: Look for cases where an authoritative link frequently appears next to a link to the page in need of context, and surface those authoritative links. The good news / problem is that you can already use google this way. If you google a given URL, you'll get results of people talking about it! E.g. the current top article on HN is: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/ios-14-5-offers-unlock-iphone-with-apple-watch-diverse-siri-voices-and-more/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/ios-14-5-offers-unloc... If I google this, I get a Reddit thread discussing this, two misses (MacRumors frontpage and a CNBC index page), and a Korean page. The last might be fine, but I can't read it so I don't know. Maybe the Apple announcement is just too new, but this doesn't seem super useful. Of course, maybe there are refinements one could make for this use case. Maybe this technique is just more useful for political or science topics. I don't know. I tend to doubt it, though.

ergot_vacation 6y ago
The problem of course is that a certain crowd runs most large sites, and as seen on Youtube, if things they dislike become too popular they will do whatever they can to suppress that popularity. Put another way, there are two definitions of "Authoritative": what does the raw data suggest, and what does the echo chamber I've surrounded myself with and become convinced is reality say. I think we all know which standard would be used if such a system was implemented (and of course, it's already been attempted in small ways).
anigbrowl 6y ago
I agree that Pagerank and its derivatives are enormously valuable, but a disadvantage is that the graph isn't exposed, only an ordered list of search results. Even if you leave aside the issue of this being weighted by known user preferences, it's akin to trying to understand the structure of a tree by looking at a handful of leaves.

marcodiego 6y ago

There is something that can fight misinformation without censorship: a mix a culture + education. Scientific method, critical thing, logic, statistics coupled with a bunch of historical examples of non-intuitive results and demonstrating situations where correlation does not implies causation should be teach on schools repeatedly and from early age. Most adults don't even know what a double blind study is. It is not surprising that so many people are falling prey to covid quackery.

barbazoo 6y ago

Education, to me, seems like the perfect way to "fight misinformation without censorship". Teach our kids how to read, how to understand, how to contextualize and think critically. We don't need big tech to come up with a solution to a problem that big tech caused to some degree.

mjburgess 6y ago
This misses the problem. At each education level there is a different set of causes that leads to misinformation spread. At low-IQs is resistance to thinking as such; at high-IQs its, typically, marginalization from society and motivated thinking. Across the mid-range its lack of meaning, contentment, emotional stability. It's not really an education problem. The high-IQs are hyper-critical thinkers; the low-IQs arent ever going to be. The issue is trust in institutions, as most knowledge is just a function of trust; and secondly, a sense of meaning, inclusion and purpose for many.
- barbazoo 6y ago
  I agree that knowledge is connected to trust. So what happened, we don't trust our institutions, schools, government, anymore and all of a sudden we believe every dumb thing we see on Facebook? > a sense of meaning, inclusion and purpose for many I think you're right, that IS crucial as well. I often feel that I'm so content with how my own life is going that I neither have the time nor interest to marginalize a certain group, hate another, feel superior to immigrants or whatever. No matter how much Fox news or CNN I read or watch (which I don't do much at all).
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    > So what happened, we don't trust our institutions, schools, government, anymore and all of a sudden we believe every dumb thing we see on Facebook? Yes.
narag 6y ago
I agree but you also need to teach them that neither side of the political divide is right on everything. Good luck getting support for that.

keiferski 6y ago

I don’t think many people working in tech understand the nature of the Internet when it comes to information. The cat is out of the bag and there is no returning to a world of universal “authoritative sources” (term used in the article.) Framed historically, we are experiencing a similar situation to the invention of the printing press. All attempts to reel in “misinformation” by appealing to legacy media outlets are doomed to fail, precisely because these outlets have lost the trust they once had. I don’t see them regaining it in the near future, if at all. Instead, the likely outcome is a constellation of reputation-based media sources. “Joe Brown is always honest, so I’ll see what he says in his podcast” is probably the future source of information for the average person. Fact checkers will never be anything other than a biased opinion of a particular institution, as been shown time and time again.

noofen 6y ago
Has anyone considered that the "rise of misinformation" and Qanon-type conspiracy discourse is just a symptom of elite and institutional decadence?
- keiferski 6y ago
  I haven’t really followed the Q-Anon thing well enough to know much about it, but it definitely does strike me as a consequence of institutional decadence. I’m not sure the content of the conspiracy is actually relevant. Most people want to trust the information they’re told, so the popularity of such things does seem like a symptom and not a cause.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  elite and institutional decadence What does that mean? I googled "institutional decadence" but am still not clear on the definition. Could you give some examples of elite and institutional decadence?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Not the OP, but this just refers to the gradual erosion of many institutions in American society. Universities, media, political structures, etc. have all lost the trust of the populace over the last ~30 years, if not longer. Whether this is from an actual lowering of standards or just an inevitable consequence of new media is a different question. I’d suggest reading works by a critic named John Simon for the former opinion.

tryonenow 6y ago

>Systems built specifically for contextualization might not only support media literacy; they could also provide the data needed for fact-checkers to determine what to focus on, and could even help support the emotional literacy relevant to avoid harmful reactions to misinformation (from lashing out at loved ones, to terrorist radicalization). All I'm hearing is techno-authoritarians building a system to further suppress dissenting views. Even "authoritative" sources are supposed to disagree; that's how science works. I think the uncertain nature of reality is such that any "authoritative" source is likely to eventually make mistakes, and building rigid systems to hide alternative viewpoints is a form of social disenfranchisement.

the_lonely_road 6y ago

I spent a good amount of time trying to build a contextualization engine for a different reason (auto correct, sick to death of it being so bad when I'm clearly talking in a very specific context bubble using these same words that everyone else is using over and over), and man can I say that is is extremely difficult to get 5 people in a room to not define 5 different context buckets for a specific piece of text in a given situation. In the end I decided that the real world phenomenon I was trying to model was probably closer to a Google+ multiple identifies than it was to a single channel like Facebook.

standardUser 6y ago

This already exists. Unless I am missing something, we've already been seeing these on major platforms like Facebook and Instagram (if not others) for at least a year now. I've noticed it mostly on posts about the 2020 election and COVID-19 facts/news. I mostly like the approach. It seems like the least restrictive and least objectionable solution (or partial solution) to an incredibly tricky and important problem.

JI00912 6y ago
I maybe misunderstanding this post, but Facebook information about covid and the last us election has been terrible.
- standardUser 6y ago
  I'm talking specifically about the little info blurbs that Facebook automatically attaches to posts about COVID. They are links to factual information. I'm not talking about information that other people share about COVID on Facebook.

adamrezich 6y ago

whenever I hear talk about "creating context" with regards to the vast amounts of conflicting information on the Internet, I can't help but recall the infamous scene near the end of 2001's Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, wherein protagonist Raiden talks to an AI that has kind of actually been behind everything up to this point (keeping in mind that this game was released long before the modern social media-oriented Web) (emphasis mine): --- AI: The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century. As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us. We started with genetic engineering, and in the end, we succeeded in digitizing life itself. But there are things not covered by genetic information. [...] Human memories, ideas. Culture. History. Genes don't contain any record of human history. Is it something that should not be passed on? Should that information be left at the mercy of nature? We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books... But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really. That's what history is [...] But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander... All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution. Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship. Raiden: Are you telling me it's not!? AI: You're being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. Raiden: Create context? AI: The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you. Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans. Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims. Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing. "Be nice to other people." "But beat out the competition!" "You're special." "Believe in yourself and you will succeed." But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed... You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth." And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. We're trying to stop that from happening. It's our responsibility as rulers. Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out to stimulate the evolution of the species. Raiden: And you think you're qualified to decide what's necessary and not? AI: Absolutely. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations? That's what it means to create context. --- pretty prophetic for a 2001 video game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C31XYgr8gp0

giantg2 6y ago

"The contextualization engine compares the content being shared with that from authoritative sources and provides articles or other media results that are sufficiently related." How are these authoritative sources chosen? This sounds like it would be rife for manipulation. Plus, just relying on an appeal to authority as the validation of the information will not weed out mistakes or errors in the content. What are the standards for these other media results it will provide? News articles, blogs, studies, etc. Some might be better than others depending on the topic. The news and journalists are supposed to be the old school contextual engine. How do we see an automated version being any better quality?

Fellshard 6y ago
It already is. Watch the Twitter 'trending' pane over time, and you'll notice that they add context in exactly one worldview direction, incurring massive editorialized anchor bias.
ergot_vacation 6y ago
Exactly. The fundamental problem with the phrase "misinformation" is that what is or isn't "misinformation" is subjective. Truth and reality aren't subjective, but people's beliefs about the nature of them are, very much so. It's impossible to solve the problem by asking "The Experts" to adjudicate what is and isn't true, because The Experts have become too mired in corruption, greed, political intimidation and so on. They no longer represent anything even close to an impartial party, and thus are not useful tools for discerning reality anymore, at least in the traditional way of asking a question, getting an answer and accepting it.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  There is no group "The Experts". This is just a conspiratorial populism in disguise. Ah yes, The People, really know. They aren't corrupt. Oh wait! It's The People sharing, liking, and subscribing to batshit. The People are corrupt, greedy, stupid. There is no utopian solution; the worst is to leave The People to their own devices.
- apostacy 6y ago

drngdds 6y ago

Why would this be any more trusted than the misinformation warnings Youtube and Twitter already put up automatically for certain subjects? And also, I don't know how anyone can even float the possibility of making something like this a legal requirement. The ways it could be abused are really obvious.

Sophistifunk 6y ago

Why is it that everybody suddenly thinks they should get to decide what's "misinformation" for everybody else? Who gets to decide? Tech companies built on surveillance and manipulation of people for engagement and advertising? The state, with all its history of mistreating various groups of citizens, and constant propaganda? The media, who have recently abandoned even the pretence of honestly reporting on, rather than trying to steer, political winds? None of these institutions can be trusted, therefore the idea of "controlling misinformation" itself is anathema to a free society.

titzer 6y ago
> therefore the idea of "controlling misinformation" itself is anathema to a free society. Have you ever considered that maybe "free societies" have never really existed, or maybe if they have, they might have vulnerabilities that cause them to taken over by misinformation, cults, and psychotic megalomaniacs, and destroy themselves? Because this is the question that some of us are honestly wrestling with. Society doesn't look super stable right now, and it's not because there's too little freedom of information. You can tune into whatever brand of crazy turns your crank and absolutely disappear into it. The echo chambers are numerous and labyrinthine. There's just too many nutjobs out there sucking down propaganda and there's too many nutjobs producing it. Societies, like people, can become mentally deranged. Nobody really knows what to do in that case, but in general it doesn't end pretty.
- textgel 6y ago
  No, the threat at the moment is coming from malicious actors claiming that the sky is falling and that they are the ones who can protect you from it if you'll just give them the power to rule. Those advocating for this have been shown to consistently have both a history and an ideology built on lying and making efforts to hurt people. I'm grateful to see the kickback against those who would be cheering on book burning during the 1900s.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
> media, who have recently abandoned even the pretence of honestly reporting on, rather than trying to steer, political winds? This has been going on for a long time. The media has been doing this as long as there has been media. There's probably just a pretty good chance that your personal preferences were fairly well reflected in the Northeast centric, government institution trusting, upper middle class value holding, media establishment. IMO, as someone whose views were rarely reflected there and rarely saw questions asked that I'd like asked, I feel we're much better off. News organizations are being more clear about their biases (intentionally or not) and there is a much better variety of news.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Can’t work because ‘garbage in garbage out’. We see media photographers gathered around the one burning trash can to sell a narrative. When most of the media is owned by billionaires, how could it possibly be any other way?

mursicale 6y ago

" by providing a place for users to optionally access context and authoritative speech when they want it. This means that such functionality could even be required by law, just as nutrition facts are for foods. It might be required for all messaging and social media apps over a certain size, built into operating systems, or mandated through Apple App and Google Play stores." "Oi do you have a loicense for that decontextualized piece of information?"

thro1 6y ago

How to decide what's misinformation, authoritative ? - being able to choose which arbitrary sources(users) to trust you could see how everything looks like from specific POV's - or just stay in your bubble: www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html The computation of the trust metric is performed relative to a "seed" of trusted accounts. Wikipedia says the trust metric on Advogato was designed to include all individuals who could reasonably be considered members of the Free Software and Open Source communities while excluding others. "The Advogato trust metric is not attack-resistant" "Lessons From Advogato (on reputation systems)"

OnlyRepliesToBS 6y ago

'misinformation'