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Anti-Misinformation? What could possibly go wrong! I have no doubt plenty of domestic messages are going to get caught up in this and be attributed to some Russ

Anti-Misinformation? What could possibly go wrong! I have no doubt plenty of domestic messages are going to get caught up in this and be attributed to some Russian or Chinese troll farm. It's far too easy to dismiss someone as a Russian bot or paid shill. I see this being easily abused.

ctoth 5y ago
> As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. > However, like the other ministries, the name is also apt because it decides what "truth" is in Oceania. Low-effort, I know, but what was the point of everyone reading this book in High School English if not for this very moment?
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  Other countries are surely spreading misinformation online targeting American audiences. What should we do?
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from
    - bcrosby95 5y ago
      Half the people on this website can't seem to spend 5 seconds to click through to an article, and you expect 340 million people to be able to spend even more time informing themselves so they can think critically about political issues?
      - jackson1442 5y ago
        Not that I'm disagreeing with the sentiment, but reading an article on this site generally takes 5-30 minutes, not 5 seconds.
        omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
        They may be implying that many people don't click through to the article.
        valvar 5y ago
        What's the point of clicking through to the article if you're not going to read it, though?
      - DSingularity 5y ago
        Then I’m afraid the only option left is to fundamentally change technology. Faster isn’t always better. Maybe if people were forced to stare at loading pages anymore it would compel them to dig deeper instead of mindlessly scroll.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      It boggles my mind that we don't have a semester of "Critical News Consumption" (aka "Defense Against Fallacies") required in public grade school.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        It boggles my mind they allow people to graduate without being able to read, write, or do math.
      - jackson1442 5y ago
        Every high school english class I took covered this, save for British Literature. The problem is that grade school is inundated with busywork, memorization, and standardized test prep that no one but the top students cares about anything beyond their SAT score, if not just passing classes. Grade school needs to be rethought entirely. It's completely broken for the Information Age; no one needs to bother with memorizing minutia anymore, we need to focus on critical thinking.
        ethbr0 5y ago
        Personal hot take: memorization still serves both practical and brain developmental goals. Most kids nowadays can't even do basic single digit multiplication in their heads. Because they never memorized tables. How they're going to work through complex higher math problems efficiently, when every multiplication (and therefore every division) is a trip to the calculator, is beyond me. And furthermore, I can't believe all that memorization happened without changes in brain structure, especially at those ages. IMHO, we need to re-evaluate what we're having them memorize, and probably reduce the amount in favor of more critical thinking, but there's still a requirement for it. If nothing else, so that you're prepared for higher education, where one of the goals is to cram the fundamental information for your profession into imediate recall.
        jackson1442 5y ago
        Right, yes. There are certainly some things you need to know off the top of your head to facilitate learning. Generally the sets of data we explicitly have to memorize are fine- I’m more talking about exams where you’re tested over minutia rather than your understanding of the content as a whole. For example, I took a history exam where it asked “which of these books was not important to the civil rights movement?” listing three books explicitly mentioned in one sentence of the text and one that wasn’t. That’s the kind of memorization we need to get rid of- we need to be teaching people how to analyze concepts as a whole rather than simply being able to regurgitate the text.
    - artificialLimbs 5y ago
      Would be nice if people invested their own money if they felt like it, and kept their hands out of my pocket. With the atrocious behavior of teacher unions, ignorant government initiatives, and corruption of boards, the education sector is due to be burned, leveled, and completely reinvented at this point.
      - gmadsen 5y ago
        that's part of living in a society. I agree the current state of education could use a major overhaul, but even what's in your pocket doesn't have inherent value. It is entirely dependent on the strength of the Country issuing its currency. It is ultimately self defeating to desire the country go to shit so you can pay a few less % in taxes
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      >"invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from " People have been demanding we teach critical thinking in education for decades. And it's not like teacher's haven't been trying to get people to think critically all this time. The truth is, when we see information that conforms to our worldview, we naturally accept it. We only think critically when we see something we disagree with. Try it yourself, just start disagreeing with someone and watch how good they become at critiquing your arguments.
      - gmadsen 5y ago
        as an example, I think I saw a few days of material on logical fallacy in 10th grade. It should be a basic competency that is made a priority throughout middle school and high school at every year.
        BitwiseFool 5y ago
        I think this is really a human-nature problem rather than an education or lack of training problem. I believe this to be the case because of all the cognitive biases that we are born with. I also think people's willingness to 'think critically' is dependent on the personality they have. Some people are naturally more curious and open minded than others and no amount of education will change that. I don't think it is a hopeless cause, however, and it's good to teach critical thinking methods. But I look at this in a similar way to health education. We have been teaching people about good nutrition, healthy eating, and the benefits of an active lifestyle for years but most people don't apply the lessons. At some point more education on the same topics isn't going to help anymore because it's a different kind of problem than not having been taught.
        cwkoss 5y ago
        Lets invest $1B into a program to objectively measure which people are least vulnerable to logical fallacies, examine how they cultivated that skill, and build a curriculum for use in every public classroom.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from Where might people who are long out of school receive such an education, if they are not seeking it? And what if it doesn't work as well as you hope it would?
      - gmadsen 5y ago
        doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying. To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy
        tablespoon 5y ago
        > doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying. > To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy My point is that relying on an ill-specified "invest[ment] in education" with idealistic hopes for its effectiveness is pretty much equivalent to "doing nothing." The people who most need it will not seek it out. If it works (a big if) and it's incorporated into compulsory education, it'll take at least a decade to show any results at all, and whole generation or two to work its way through the population and have a chance to actually solve the problem. And like another commenter mentioned, it's not like our current educational system hasn't been trying to instill critical thinking since before any of us were born, so I have little hope that some new investment will solve that problem. Relying on education in this case is like having window break during a rainstorm and deciding to fix the problem by ordering a new window from the manufacturer, with a lead time of a month. That might eventually fix the broken window, but it's not going to solve the problem of rain pouring through the broken window now. If you've got a rainy month ahead, the incomplete solution may even lead to more problems, like mold. This is a problem that requires both long-term strategic and shorter-term tactical solutions.
    - tdeck 5y ago
      Whenever I see a response like this it feels like the person who wrote it is a prime target for misinformation. When you think that someone who falls victim to a misinformation campaign are just undedicated or lack "the ability to spend 30 seconds critically thinking", you're not acknowledging that we all process far too much information every day to vet all of it. This isn't something that only affects people who are stupid and/or ignorant.
      - version_five 5y ago
        Ironically, your position as I understand it seems to be the most susceptible to misinformation. Outsourcing critical thought to some trusted authority just means you get that authority's version. Anyway, pretending that critical thinking is the same as vetting every piece of information you see is disingenuous. Like anything else, there is some severity vs ease of checking position that a given putative fact has. If you're going to die imminently, best to make sure you carefully understand. If it's today's urgent revelations on the news about ongoing issue x y or z, why worry too much how accurate it is. I do agree it's not the same as "stupid or ignorant" and often these labels are applied to people challenging orthodoxy as opposed to those not thinking critically. It has more to do with credulity, need for acceptance/ belonging, and what I would call religious tendencies.
        tdeck 5y ago
        I read your comment as suggesting that this problem only needs to be addressed at the consumption end - that is, by empowering the public with better critical thinking skills. But I fundamentally disagree, both with the premise that people who are affected by misinformation simply lack critical thinking skills, and by the idea that this is a practical solution to the problem. This perspective is popular among the intellectual crowd because it appeals to our shared love for learning, but also because it's self-congratulatory. It says "if people just had the skills I have, they wouldn't be taken in", but history shows that's not the case as a general statement. We're all affected by advertising, after all. As for "outsourcing critical thinking to some trusted authority", that's one of the heuristics we all use, no matter how educated we are, and we all have a collection of trusted authorities. Educated people probably tend to have different trusted authorities and different ways of selecting them - they may produce a better outcome but the strategy is very similar. For my part I think this problem needs to be addressed on the supply /distribution side as well. We need to work against the purveyors of lies and fraud, and that's how it's always been. That was how we cleaned up the patent medicine system and made the stock market more trustworthy, and in some form (probably not through the DoD) we as a society will need strategies to combat other kinds of misinformation as well.
    - version_five 5y ago
      Nobody in government or political class wants people to actually think critically. They want people to blindly swallow whatever they are told from "approved sources" and consider any dissenting opinions to be "fake news". Its in nobody's interest except the individual's to think critically. You don't need to look very far in any direction right now to see how frowned upon critical thought is
  - bopbeepboop 5y ago
    I would suggest two avenues: - making data easily accessible and publishing our own narratives - building better consensus mechanisms, which can be federated in nature One of our problems in the US is the media spreading its own misinformation — eg, hyper focusing on a few dozen wrongfully killed black men, while ignoring the thousands dead from depolicing. That kind of misinformation for the sake of narrative has literally killed thousands of Americans. Contrarily, Russian “misinformation” tends to focus on actual but inconvenient facts — such as US institutions suppressing negative coverage of the Bidens, emphasizing Bidens racist/sexist policies, emphasizing the hypocrisy of the wealthy, etc. We can’t fight foreign influence operations by way of selective truth telling by bolstering the domestic propaganda — as these programs tend to suggest. We must innovate better tools for an informed citizenry.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    Empower the population to inform itself. Right speech is a natural outcome of free speech.
    - Forbo 5y ago
      I would agree if I hadn't had such a vast array of experience trying to counter misinformation in my online interactions with others already. I blame the bullshit asymmetry principle, aka Brandolini's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law Edit: This could be as simple as something that someone heard once and genuinely believes, passing on old wives' tales. Trying to combat a dedicated disinformation adversary is even more difficult.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Right speech is only a natural outcome of free speech if you have a very disciplined population. (Disciplined intellectually, morally, perhaps other ways as well.) Without that... not so much. So, do we have that kind of population? Examine the empirical evidence. Do we? I'm not in favor of censorship, but your position here doesn't work.
      - swayvil 5y ago
        Dictating "truth" leads to 3 diseases. 1. People get stressed out. 2. People clutch their favorite bullshit in an unbreakable deathgrip. 3. People dictate their bullshit to everybody within earshot. OTOH, truth tastes better than bullshit. Clearly. Given the freedom to experiment people will come around eventually. So let's provide the people that freedom.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I think it's pretty normal to be concerned about both foreign and domestic misinformation campaigns, even when the domestic campaigns are billed as 'anti-misinformation'.
  - dmitrygr 5y ago
    Teach kids in schools how to be critical of all you read? Teach them persuasion techniques and how to spot them, logical fallacies and how to understand them. If your stated goal is really fighting misinformation this will do. If your stated goal, however, is indoctrination, then yes indeed you need a $1B contract to "fight misinformation with misinformation"
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      Is it possible to teach people to think critically without actually taking a stand on any issue that requires critical thought?
      - BitwiseFool 5y ago
        How about a "Modern Propaganda Techniques" class? In other words, here's how you deceive people and here are tips on effective sophistry. Maybe if you train people to see the patterns that will be enough.
        tshaddox 5y ago
        How is it possible for someone to teach a class to identify deception without first being able to identify deception?
        BitwiseFool 5y ago
        I might have misunderstood what you meant. Of course the teacher would know about identifying deception. I thought you were looking for a way to teach others without using partisan examples/current events because that would imply taking a stand on the issue. And, if you took a stand that might turn people off. Perhaps people could use various examples from history on now 'settled issues' like prohibition and free-silver. Show them what kind of underhanded techniques they used and ask them to try a modern digital campaign.
        tshaddox 5y ago
  - ayngg 5y ago
    Misinformation is an issue because trust in politicians, the government, journalists, the media and the scientists they use as spokespeople has eroded significantly. It is probably easier for them to dump 1B into something like this initiative than restore trust in those institutions.
    - kadoban 5y ago
      What alternative proposal would you have?
      - merpnderp 5y ago
        Maybe by our institutions admitting their mistakes and being open and honest about their conclusions. Do you know how many anti-vaxxers talk about Biden and Harris saying they'd never take the vaccine last year until it was fully FDA certified, or how masks likely don't work because the CDC and FDA said they were mostly worthless to anyone who wasn't a trained professional (before changing their viewpoint, without explanation, last summer)? How many newspapers, online, and tv presenters either don't even bother with corrections, or run them on page 11 in small font at the bottom? If it hurts the ax they are grinding, they'll never admit a mistake.
        breckenedge 5y ago
        Or the way Trump redacted his recommendation to inject clorox and sunshine?
      - taxedman 5y ago
        Not give away a billion dollars?
      - godelski 5y ago
        Alternative? Not manipulating people and being honest? Here's an example that includes Climate Change. On the right they deny its existence (they used to believe in it, then didn't as Obama came in, and are turning around again albeit slowly). News and politicians say the scientists are lying and taking money from "Big Green." They then promote coal, oil, and their interest groups. The right is too easy to pick on here because it is just so blatantly anti-science. On the left there's definitely a significantly closer resemblance to what the scientists are saying, but they ignore what is convenient. There's only really discussions about what is popular. There's minor talk about carbon taxes. There's little to no talk about carbon capture, and when there is they only talk about reforestation (reforestation is great but suspected to not be enough, specifically fast enough) (scientists actually want us to be carbon negative, not zero carbon). There is little discussion outside of electricity and vehicles (which is only 54% of contributions from America). The idea that the crisis is purely political and can be solved politically is still perpetuated, not recognizing we need major scientific advancements (e.g. better batteries, smarter grids, new zero carbon energy sources, inventions in heating, significant reduction in clean energy production that can be exported to developing countries and be cheaper than coal for them --this one is huge actually--, etc). Politicians here blame Republicans for not being able to pass any bill but still are not united on their own front. They still aren't acting with anywhere near the same concern the scientific community has about the issue. But the real kicker is: why are we listening to politicians about science anyways? I also don't want Bill Nye talking about climate change on TV I want climate scientists. I don't care if it is boring and an unfamiliar face (Fauci was unfamiliar not long ago).
  - dd36 5y ago
    Fix non-social media company revenues so they can have healthy journalism departments that don’t have to rely on clickbait innuendo.
  - goostavos 5y ago
    I vote: literally nothing. A war on "misinformation" is about as likely to succeed as a war on drugs. The negative effects of it are surely to be even worse. At least "what is a drug?" can be defined fairly easily.
    - dekken_ 5y ago
      > At least "what is a drug?" can be defined fairly easily. go on...
    - dumbfoundded 5y ago
      Isn't that what we're already doing? How do you think it's going?
      - notheretoo 5y ago
        Well. Count me up as one who was a die hard Bernie supporter who has made a very hard right turn as my former home (as a progressive Dem) seems to be arguing in favor of censorship at every turn. If you want more people like me keep thinking you can stifle speech on the internet.
        specialist 5y ago
        Fact checking is now censorship?
        Mountain_Skies 5y ago
        Who fact checks the fact checkers?
        kota2 5y ago
        That is the point I was trying to make when I replied to another poster. There is no room for a central information gatekeeper. I'm so glad I never signed up to use any social media, look at what it has done to society.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Educate people to be independent thinkers capable of assessing facts rationally. That is a threat to some people who don't want their sacred cows challenged so we are where we are today.
    - dumbfoundded 5y ago
      Has that ever been done successfully on any large scale?
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    Nothing. The 2016 Russian Facebook campaign had less exposure than most blogs I read, and who even reads blogs any more? This is going to do far more harm than it could every possibly do good. Mostly by disenfranchising Americans from participating in the public debate, something I'm pretty sure the US government is expressly forbidden from doing to anyone, even non-citizens.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    Have a healthy ecosystem of investigative journalists who use encourage critical thinking in their readers by showing evidence of such misinformation.
  - halitosisdong 5y ago
    How about increase the budget for education and include critical thinking in classes
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  The point is to be aware that it is happening. Are you suggesting just letting Senators amplify the message that Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood and is a demon, and 20% of the population believes it? When do you step in and say, "Ok dipshits, stop making shit up to scare the rubes"? Or are you OK with just streams of shit clogging the channels, like Bannon suggested? EDIT: At some point we need some kind of factual moderation. We can't have the US turn into 4chan, it needs a DanG to stay like HN. I don't buy all your slippery slope paranoia, right now the US is turning into a shit-show because half the country is running around saying "well nothing is really true borkborkbork" and electing autocratic criminals. Fuck. That.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Who are you to decide what people believe? There are far more important topics than HRCs purported baby-blood diet.
    - SavantIdiot 5y ago
      Simple: I'm not the one lying for profit and power. That's why I'm who should decide.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        Touché
        SavantIdiot 5y ago
        Honestly, I'm frustrated as hell that known bullshit is taken as truth (flat earth? come on!) and I agree with other responses (including yours) that picking one person or group to be "the authority" clearly is a target for manipulation. But when is enough, enough? There was a time when academics were the source of truth, and yes, sometimes they bone it, but they at least try to correct it. I dunno, I'm ready to go back to that, because this free-for-all of "alternative facts" can't be a good thing, can it?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  For that matter, what’s the point of high school?
- zardo 5y ago
  Surely the Department of Defense wouldn't be involved in that kind Orwellian twisting of language.
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    Irony not lost given that the Department of Defense was originally called the Department of War :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Wa...
    - leereeves 5y ago
      That's a common misconception. The DoW was just the army, and the navy was a separate cabinet department, until the National Military Establishment was created in 1947, and that department, not the DoW, was renamed to the DoD in 1949. The DoW became the departments of the army and air force, inside the DoD. See third paragraph in that Wiki link, and second paragraph in this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_the_Navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_th...
jdavis703 5y ago
It sounds like the goal is to hoover up social media data to generate intelligence that can be used to target propaganda sources (I imagine this could be anything from imposing sanctions to cyber sabotage to sharing suspicious activity with social media companies.)
christkv 5y ago
Fancy new word for old fashioned propaganda.
- NonContro 5y ago
  And you don't even need to generate the propaganda. The internet is so full of voices that you just silence anyone who doesn't fit your agenda. What's even more worrying is if one of the 'adversaries' gains control of this system. Maybe Russia or China is deliberating sowing division and dysfunction in the country, and has bought off a few key officials. How would we know? Anyone investigating the topic would be silenced by the same mechanism.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    They don't have to be bought. They can be true believers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Well, here's an innocent, well-meaning American - not a bot or a shill - who has decided, for whatever reason, that RT is a trustworthy source of information. They regularly repost what RT says on Facebook. Now, what are you going to do? Block them as a source of disinformation (because what they are reposting is in fact disinformation)? Or allow them to keep going, because they are innocent and confused?
- deadalus 5y ago
  If you block them(the user for spreading 'disinformation) , they will just move on to a different social media platform that's less/not moderated = Parler, Gab, MeWe, Gettr, 4chan /pol/ . If you block RT, don't be surprised to see BBC, NPR, CBC and other (govt funded) news outlets banned as well in many territories. People have a distrust for their own governments - because its their own government that spies on them and has the ability to oppress them. A Russian will trust US media more than his countries own media because they are heavily influenced by the government. Same goes for many US consumers. Media/News company owners have a close relationship with the government.
- slownews45 5y ago
  It's worth going to the RT homepage to get a sense of this RT "misinformation". https://www.rt.com/ https://www.rt.com/ I feel like I get equally slanted stuff from Fox and MSNBC etc.
  - npunt 5y ago
    You might want to read up on them. Getting people to go 'oh its all the same' is pretty much the mission of these types of outlets. RT works by seeming like just another news source while subtly pushing the agenda on key issues of the Russian state.
    - Fidelix 5y ago
      Yes, because NYT and WaPo did so well with the Trump-Russian collusion stuff, right? ... oh...
sneak 5y ago
Spending a billion dollars of tax money to spam social media is already abuse.
kolbe 5y ago
I wouldn't be so confident they actual combat misinfomration in any way shape or form. My guess is $950mm of this money goes into the bank accounts of politically connected people, and $50mm is spent fecklessly pretending to do their job for the sake of covering their asses.
tootie 5y ago
Idk what you think is actually going to happen here though. This is a DoD program targeting global adversaries. I seriously doubt their policy is going to be finding misleading Facebook posts and issuing takedown requests. They're probably looking for major sources of disinformation campaigns to target for countermeasures. They really can't go after US citizens.
- godshatter 5y ago
  You have more faith in the US government than I do. I could see them finding out that there exists, for example, a campaign by global adversaries to spread vaccine misinformation. It's an easy step for them to start gathering and investigating all anti-vaccine posts with a certain size following on social media networks whether they are posted by a US citizen or not, in order to determine if they are related. Sure, the military can't act against US citizens directly, but they could easily hand them off to the FBI, who can. I'll wait and see, though, I guess. It will be interesting to see what "misinformation" they decide to go after first. It's not liking choosing their target could be easily abused or anything.
  - fhood 5y ago
    Hand them off to the FBI and then what?
    - AstralDwarves 5y ago
      The FBI creates a group, invites all of them to join, proposes a terror plot, arrests all of them for being in a terror group, and pats themselves on the back for another job well done.
  - tootie 5y ago
    Posting anti-vax material isn't illegal. If they find actual illegal material like promoting violence or insurrection, then great because that's a punishable crime.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
I could envisage combat of a misinformation with misinformation or information... hm so... who ever first says you are a bot wins? :D God forbid saying something anti-war or anti-oil you will be labeled as communist immediately
jorblumesea 5y ago
It's not like the DoD is going to be flagging FB posts. It's likely a program designed to disrupt foreign interference in our affairs. It's an intelligence program. In this space, it's specifically ISIS recruiting efforts. I feel like you have a gross misinterpretation of what the DoD's mandate is...
fhood 5y ago
1.) The Russia and China do not fall under the purview of this contract as pointed out in another comment. 2.) Since this is paid for by the Gov't it does fall under the 1st amendment and I have a heard time believing that if it was systematically abused that it would go unnoticed or unchallenged. 3.) Do you suggest that no countermeasures be taken against weaponized misinformation and recruiting? Particularly given how well demonstrated its (foreign propaganda's) efficacy is?
Grustaf 5y ago
Surely that is the entire point?

ctoth 5y ago

> As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. > However, like the other ministries, the name is also apt because it decides what "truth" is in Oceania. Low-effort, I know, but what was the point of everyone reading this book in High School English if not for this very moment?

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Other countries are surely spreading misinformation online targeting American audiences. What should we do?
- gmadsen 5y ago
  invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Half the people on this website can't seem to spend 5 seconds to click through to an article, and you expect 340 million people to be able to spend even more time informing themselves so they can think critically about political issues?
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      Not that I'm disagreeing with the sentiment, but reading an article on this site generally takes 5-30 minutes, not 5 seconds.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
        They may be implying that many people don't click through to the article.
        valvar 5y ago
        What's the point of clicking through to the article if you're not going to read it, though?
    - DSingularity 5y ago
      Then I’m afraid the only option left is to fundamentally change technology. Faster isn’t always better. Maybe if people were forced to stare at loading pages anymore it would compel them to dig deeper instead of mindlessly scroll.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    It boggles my mind that we don't have a semester of "Critical News Consumption" (aka "Defense Against Fallacies") required in public grade school.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      It boggles my mind they allow people to graduate without being able to read, write, or do math.
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      Every high school english class I took covered this, save for British Literature. The problem is that grade school is inundated with busywork, memorization, and standardized test prep that no one but the top students cares about anything beyond their SAT score, if not just passing classes. Grade school needs to be rethought entirely. It's completely broken for the Information Age; no one needs to bother with memorizing minutia anymore, we need to focus on critical thinking.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Personal hot take: memorization still serves both practical and brain developmental goals. Most kids nowadays can't even do basic single digit multiplication in their heads. Because they never memorized tables. How they're going to work through complex higher math problems efficiently, when every multiplication (and therefore every division) is a trip to the calculator, is beyond me. And furthermore, I can't believe all that memorization happened without changes in brain structure, especially at those ages. IMHO, we need to re-evaluate what we're having them memorize, and probably reduce the amount in favor of more critical thinking, but there's still a requirement for it. If nothing else, so that you're prepared for higher education, where one of the goals is to cram the fundamental information for your profession into imediate recall.
        jackson1442 5y ago
        Right, yes. There are certainly some things you need to know off the top of your head to facilitate learning. Generally the sets of data we explicitly have to memorize are fine- I’m more talking about exams where you’re tested over minutia rather than your understanding of the content as a whole. For example, I took a history exam where it asked “which of these books was not important to the civil rights movement?” listing three books explicitly mentioned in one sentence of the text and one that wasn’t. That’s the kind of memorization we need to get rid of- we need to be teaching people how to analyze concepts as a whole rather than simply being able to regurgitate the text.
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    Would be nice if people invested their own money if they felt like it, and kept their hands out of my pocket. With the atrocious behavior of teacher unions, ignorant government initiatives, and corruption of boards, the education sector is due to be burned, leveled, and completely reinvented at this point.
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      that's part of living in a society. I agree the current state of education could use a major overhaul, but even what's in your pocket doesn't have inherent value. It is entirely dependent on the strength of the Country issuing its currency. It is ultimately self defeating to desire the country go to shit so you can pay a few less % in taxes
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    >"invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from " People have been demanding we teach critical thinking in education for decades. And it's not like teacher's haven't been trying to get people to think critically all this time. The truth is, when we see information that conforms to our worldview, we naturally accept it. We only think critically when we see something we disagree with. Try it yourself, just start disagreeing with someone and watch how good they become at critiquing your arguments.
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      as an example, I think I saw a few days of material on logical fallacy in 10th grade. It should be a basic competency that is made a priority throughout middle school and high school at every year.
      - BitwiseFool 5y ago
        I think this is really a human-nature problem rather than an education or lack of training problem. I believe this to be the case because of all the cognitive biases that we are born with. I also think people's willingness to 'think critically' is dependent on the personality they have. Some people are naturally more curious and open minded than others and no amount of education will change that. I don't think it is a hopeless cause, however, and it's good to teach critical thinking methods. But I look at this in a similar way to health education. We have been teaching people about good nutrition, healthy eating, and the benefits of an active lifestyle for years but most people don't apply the lessons. At some point more education on the same topics isn't going to help anymore because it's a different kind of problem than not having been taught.
        cwkoss 5y ago
        Lets invest $1B into a program to objectively measure which people are least vulnerable to logical fallacies, examine how they cultivated that skill, and build a curriculum for use in every public classroom.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from Where might people who are long out of school receive such an education, if they are not seeking it? And what if it doesn't work as well as you hope it would?
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying. To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy
      - tablespoon 5y ago
        > doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying. > To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy My point is that relying on an ill-specified "invest[ment] in education" with idealistic hopes for its effectiveness is pretty much equivalent to "doing nothing." The people who most need it will not seek it out. If it works (a big if) and it's incorporated into compulsory education, it'll take at least a decade to show any results at all, and whole generation or two to work its way through the population and have a chance to actually solve the problem. And like another commenter mentioned, it's not like our current educational system hasn't been trying to instill critical thinking since before any of us were born, so I have little hope that some new investment will solve that problem. Relying on education in this case is like having window break during a rainstorm and deciding to fix the problem by ordering a new window from the manufacturer, with a lead time of a month. That might eventually fix the broken window, but it's not going to solve the problem of rain pouring through the broken window now. If you've got a rainy month ahead, the incomplete solution may even lead to more problems, like mold. This is a problem that requires both long-term strategic and shorter-term tactical solutions.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Whenever I see a response like this it feels like the person who wrote it is a prime target for misinformation. When you think that someone who falls victim to a misinformation campaign are just undedicated or lack "the ability to spend 30 seconds critically thinking", you're not acknowledging that we all process far too much information every day to vet all of it. This isn't something that only affects people who are stupid and/or ignorant.
    - version_five 5y ago
      Ironically, your position as I understand it seems to be the most susceptible to misinformation. Outsourcing critical thought to some trusted authority just means you get that authority's version. Anyway, pretending that critical thinking is the same as vetting every piece of information you see is disingenuous. Like anything else, there is some severity vs ease of checking position that a given putative fact has. If you're going to die imminently, best to make sure you carefully understand. If it's today's urgent revelations on the news about ongoing issue x y or z, why worry too much how accurate it is. I do agree it's not the same as "stupid or ignorant" and often these labels are applied to people challenging orthodoxy as opposed to those not thinking critically. It has more to do with credulity, need for acceptance/ belonging, and what I would call religious tendencies.
      - tdeck 5y ago
        I read your comment as suggesting that this problem only needs to be addressed at the consumption end - that is, by empowering the public with better critical thinking skills. But I fundamentally disagree, both with the premise that people who are affected by misinformation simply lack critical thinking skills, and by the idea that this is a practical solution to the problem. This perspective is popular among the intellectual crowd because it appeals to our shared love for learning, but also because it's self-congratulatory. It says "if people just had the skills I have, they wouldn't be taken in", but history shows that's not the case as a general statement. We're all affected by advertising, after all. As for "outsourcing critical thinking to some trusted authority", that's one of the heuristics we all use, no matter how educated we are, and we all have a collection of trusted authorities. Educated people probably tend to have different trusted authorities and different ways of selecting them - they may produce a better outcome but the strategy is very similar. For my part I think this problem needs to be addressed on the supply /distribution side as well. We need to work against the purveyors of lies and fraud, and that's how it's always been. That was how we cleaned up the patent medicine system and made the stock market more trustworthy, and in some form (probably not through the DoD) we as a society will need strategies to combat other kinds of misinformation as well.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Nobody in government or political class wants people to actually think critically. They want people to blindly swallow whatever they are told from "approved sources" and consider any dissenting opinions to be "fake news". Its in nobody's interest except the individual's to think critically. You don't need to look very far in any direction right now to see how frowned upon critical thought is
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  I would suggest two avenues: - making data easily accessible and publishing our own narratives - building better consensus mechanisms, which can be federated in nature One of our problems in the US is the media spreading its own misinformation — eg, hyper focusing on a few dozen wrongfully killed black men, while ignoring the thousands dead from depolicing. That kind of misinformation for the sake of narrative has literally killed thousands of Americans. Contrarily, Russian “misinformation” tends to focus on actual but inconvenient facts — such as US institutions suppressing negative coverage of the Bidens, emphasizing Bidens racist/sexist policies, emphasizing the hypocrisy of the wealthy, etc. We can’t fight foreign influence operations by way of selective truth telling by bolstering the domestic propaganda — as these programs tend to suggest. We must innovate better tools for an informed citizenry.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Empower the population to inform itself. Right speech is a natural outcome of free speech.
  - Forbo 5y ago
    I would agree if I hadn't had such a vast array of experience trying to counter misinformation in my online interactions with others already. I blame the bullshit asymmetry principle, aka Brandolini's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law Edit: This could be as simple as something that someone heard once and genuinely believes, passing on old wives' tales. Trying to combat a dedicated disinformation adversary is even more difficult.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Right speech is only a natural outcome of free speech if you have a very disciplined population. (Disciplined intellectually, morally, perhaps other ways as well.) Without that... not so much. So, do we have that kind of population? Examine the empirical evidence. Do we? I'm not in favor of censorship, but your position here doesn't work.
    - swayvil 5y ago
      Dictating "truth" leads to 3 diseases. 1. People get stressed out. 2. People clutch their favorite bullshit in an unbreakable deathgrip. 3. People dictate their bullshit to everybody within earshot. OTOH, truth tastes better than bullshit. Clearly. Given the freedom to experiment people will come around eventually. So let's provide the people that freedom.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I think it's pretty normal to be concerned about both foreign and domestic misinformation campaigns, even when the domestic campaigns are billed as 'anti-misinformation'.
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  Teach kids in schools how to be critical of all you read? Teach them persuasion techniques and how to spot them, logical fallacies and how to understand them. If your stated goal is really fighting misinformation this will do. If your stated goal, however, is indoctrination, then yes indeed you need a $1B contract to "fight misinformation with misinformation"
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Is it possible to teach people to think critically without actually taking a stand on any issue that requires critical thought?
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      How about a "Modern Propaganda Techniques" class? In other words, here's how you deceive people and here are tips on effective sophistry. Maybe if you train people to see the patterns that will be enough.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        How is it possible for someone to teach a class to identify deception without first being able to identify deception?
        BitwiseFool 5y ago
        I might have misunderstood what you meant. Of course the teacher would know about identifying deception. I thought you were looking for a way to teach others without using partisan examples/current events because that would imply taking a stand on the issue. And, if you took a stand that might turn people off. Perhaps people could use various examples from history on now 'settled issues' like prohibition and free-silver. Show them what kind of underhanded techniques they used and ask them to try a modern digital campaign.
        tshaddox 5y ago
- ayngg 5y ago
  Misinformation is an issue because trust in politicians, the government, journalists, the media and the scientists they use as spokespeople has eroded significantly. It is probably easier for them to dump 1B into something like this initiative than restore trust in those institutions.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    What alternative proposal would you have?
    - merpnderp 5y ago
      Maybe by our institutions admitting their mistakes and being open and honest about their conclusions. Do you know how many anti-vaxxers talk about Biden and Harris saying they'd never take the vaccine last year until it was fully FDA certified, or how masks likely don't work because the CDC and FDA said they were mostly worthless to anyone who wasn't a trained professional (before changing their viewpoint, without explanation, last summer)? How many newspapers, online, and tv presenters either don't even bother with corrections, or run them on page 11 in small font at the bottom? If it hurts the ax they are grinding, they'll never admit a mistake.
      - breckenedge 5y ago
        Or the way Trump redacted his recommendation to inject clorox and sunshine?
    - taxedman 5y ago
      Not give away a billion dollars?
    - godelski 5y ago
      Alternative? Not manipulating people and being honest? Here's an example that includes Climate Change. On the right they deny its existence (they used to believe in it, then didn't as Obama came in, and are turning around again albeit slowly). News and politicians say the scientists are lying and taking money from "Big Green." They then promote coal, oil, and their interest groups. The right is too easy to pick on here because it is just so blatantly anti-science. On the left there's definitely a significantly closer resemblance to what the scientists are saying, but they ignore what is convenient. There's only really discussions about what is popular. There's minor talk about carbon taxes. There's little to no talk about carbon capture, and when there is they only talk about reforestation (reforestation is great but suspected to not be enough, specifically fast enough) (scientists actually want us to be carbon negative, not zero carbon). There is little discussion outside of electricity and vehicles (which is only 54% of contributions from America). The idea that the crisis is purely political and can be solved politically is still perpetuated, not recognizing we need major scientific advancements (e.g. better batteries, smarter grids, new zero carbon energy sources, inventions in heating, significant reduction in clean energy production that can be exported to developing countries and be cheaper than coal for them --this one is huge actually--, etc). Politicians here blame Republicans for not being able to pass any bill but still are not united on their own front. They still aren't acting with anywhere near the same concern the scientific community has about the issue. But the real kicker is: why are we listening to politicians about science anyways? I also don't want Bill Nye talking about climate change on TV I want climate scientists. I don't care if it is boring and an unfamiliar face (Fauci was unfamiliar not long ago).
- dd36 5y ago
  Fix non-social media company revenues so they can have healthy journalism departments that don’t have to rely on clickbait innuendo.
- goostavos 5y ago
  I vote: literally nothing. A war on "misinformation" is about as likely to succeed as a war on drugs. The negative effects of it are surely to be even worse. At least "what is a drug?" can be defined fairly easily.
  - dekken_ 5y ago
    > At least "what is a drug?" can be defined fairly easily. go on...
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago
    Isn't that what we're already doing? How do you think it's going?
    - notheretoo 5y ago
      Well. Count me up as one who was a die hard Bernie supporter who has made a very hard right turn as my former home (as a progressive Dem) seems to be arguing in favor of censorship at every turn. If you want more people like me keep thinking you can stifle speech on the internet.
      - specialist 5y ago
        Fact checking is now censorship?
        Mountain_Skies 5y ago
        Who fact checks the fact checkers?
        kota2 5y ago
        That is the point I was trying to make when I replied to another poster. There is no room for a central information gatekeeper. I'm so glad I never signed up to use any social media, look at what it has done to society.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Educate people to be independent thinkers capable of assessing facts rationally. That is a threat to some people who don't want their sacred cows challenged so we are where we are today.
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago
    Has that ever been done successfully on any large scale?
- merpnderp 5y ago
  Nothing. The 2016 Russian Facebook campaign had less exposure than most blogs I read, and who even reads blogs any more? This is going to do far more harm than it could every possibly do good. Mostly by disenfranchising Americans from participating in the public debate, something I'm pretty sure the US government is expressly forbidden from doing to anyone, even non-citizens.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Have a healthy ecosystem of investigative journalists who use encourage critical thinking in their readers by showing evidence of such misinformation.
- halitosisdong 5y ago
  How about increase the budget for education and include critical thinking in classes
SavantIdiot 5y ago
The point is to be aware that it is happening. Are you suggesting just letting Senators amplify the message that Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood and is a demon, and 20% of the population believes it? When do you step in and say, "Ok dipshits, stop making shit up to scare the rubes"? Or are you OK with just streams of shit clogging the channels, like Bannon suggested? EDIT: At some point we need some kind of factual moderation. We can't have the US turn into 4chan, it needs a DanG to stay like HN. I don't buy all your slippery slope paranoia, right now the US is turning into a shit-show because half the country is running around saying "well nothing is really true borkborkbork" and electing autocratic criminals. Fuck. That.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Who are you to decide what people believe? There are far more important topics than HRCs purported baby-blood diet.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Simple: I'm not the one lying for profit and power. That's why I'm who should decide.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Touché
      - SavantIdiot 5y ago
        Honestly, I'm frustrated as hell that known bullshit is taken as truth (flat earth? come on!) and I agree with other responses (including yours) that picking one person or group to be "the authority" clearly is a target for manipulation. But when is enough, enough? There was a time when academics were the source of truth, and yes, sometimes they bone it, but they at least try to correct it. I dunno, I'm ready to go back to that, because this free-for-all of "alternative facts" can't be a good thing, can it?
tshaddox 5y ago
For that matter, what’s the point of high school?
zardo 5y ago
Surely the Department of Defense wouldn't be involved in that kind Orwellian twisting of language.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Irony not lost given that the Department of Defense was originally called the Department of War :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Wa...
  - leereeves 5y ago
    That's a common misconception. The DoW was just the army, and the navy was a separate cabinet department, until the National Military Establishment was created in 1947, and that department, not the DoW, was renamed to the DoD in 1949. The DoW became the departments of the army and air force, inside the DoD. See third paragraph in that Wiki link, and second paragraph in this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_the_Navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_th...

jdavis703 5y ago

It sounds like the goal is to hoover up social media data to generate intelligence that can be used to target propaganda sources (I imagine this could be anything from imposing sanctions to cyber sabotage to sharing suspicious activity with social media companies.)

christkv 5y ago

Fancy new word for old fashioned propaganda.

NonContro 5y ago
And you don't even need to generate the propaganda. The internet is so full of voices that you just silence anyone who doesn't fit your agenda. What's even more worrying is if one of the 'adversaries' gains control of this system. Maybe Russia or China is deliberating sowing division and dysfunction in the country, and has bought off a few key officials. How would we know? Anyone investigating the topic would be silenced by the same mechanism.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  They don't have to be bought. They can be true believers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Well, here's an innocent, well-meaning American - not a bot or a shill - who has decided, for whatever reason, that RT is a trustworthy source of information. They regularly repost what RT says on Facebook. Now, what are you going to do? Block them as a source of disinformation (because what they are reposting is in fact disinformation)? Or allow them to keep going, because they are innocent and confused?

deadalus 5y ago
If you block them(the user for spreading 'disinformation) , they will just move on to a different social media platform that's less/not moderated = Parler, Gab, MeWe, Gettr, 4chan /pol/ . If you block RT, don't be surprised to see BBC, NPR, CBC and other (govt funded) news outlets banned as well in many territories. People have a distrust for their own governments - because its their own government that spies on them and has the ability to oppress them. A Russian will trust US media more than his countries own media because they are heavily influenced by the government. Same goes for many US consumers. Media/News company owners have a close relationship with the government.
slownews45 5y ago
It's worth going to the RT homepage to get a sense of this RT "misinformation". https://www.rt.com/ https://www.rt.com/ I feel like I get equally slanted stuff from Fox and MSNBC etc.
- npunt 5y ago
  You might want to read up on them. Getting people to go 'oh its all the same' is pretty much the mission of these types of outlets. RT works by seeming like just another news source while subtly pushing the agenda on key issues of the Russian state.
  - Fidelix 5y ago
    Yes, because NYT and WaPo did so well with the Trump-Russian collusion stuff, right? ... oh...

sneak 5y ago

Spending a billion dollars of tax money to spam social media is already abuse.

kolbe 5y ago

I wouldn't be so confident they actual combat misinfomration in any way shape or form. My guess is $950mm of this money goes into the bank accounts of politically connected people, and $50mm is spent fecklessly pretending to do their job for the sake of covering their asses.

tootie 5y ago

Idk what you think is actually going to happen here though. This is a DoD program targeting global adversaries. I seriously doubt their policy is going to be finding misleading Facebook posts and issuing takedown requests. They're probably looking for major sources of disinformation campaigns to target for countermeasures. They really can't go after US citizens.

godshatter 5y ago
You have more faith in the US government than I do. I could see them finding out that there exists, for example, a campaign by global adversaries to spread vaccine misinformation. It's an easy step for them to start gathering and investigating all anti-vaccine posts with a certain size following on social media networks whether they are posted by a US citizen or not, in order to determine if they are related. Sure, the military can't act against US citizens directly, but they could easily hand them off to the FBI, who can. I'll wait and see, though, I guess. It will be interesting to see what "misinformation" they decide to go after first. It's not liking choosing their target could be easily abused or anything.
- fhood 5y ago
  Hand them off to the FBI and then what?
  - AstralDwarves 5y ago
    The FBI creates a group, invites all of them to join, proposes a terror plot, arrests all of them for being in a terror group, and pats themselves on the back for another job well done.
- tootie 5y ago
  Posting anti-vax material isn't illegal. If they find actual illegal material like promoting violence or insurrection, then great because that's a punishable crime.
  - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

I could envisage combat of a misinformation with misinformation or information... hm so... who ever first says you are a bot wins? :D God forbid saying something anti-war or anti-oil you will be labeled as communist immediately

jorblumesea 5y ago

It's not like the DoD is going to be flagging FB posts. It's likely a program designed to disrupt foreign interference in our affairs. It's an intelligence program. In this space, it's specifically ISIS recruiting efforts. I feel like you have a gross misinterpretation of what the DoD's mandate is...

fhood 5y ago

1.) The Russia and China do not fall under the purview of this contract as pointed out in another comment. 2.) Since this is paid for by the Gov't it does fall under the 1st amendment and I have a heard time believing that if it was systematically abused that it would go unnoticed or unchallenged. 3.) Do you suggest that no countermeasures be taken against weaponized misinformation and recruiting? Particularly given how well demonstrated its (foreign propaganda's) efficacy is?

Grustaf 5y ago

Surely that is the entire point?