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Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

• Jerry2 5y ago
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  • throwawayacc2 5y ago
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    • tstrimple 5y ago
      They are wrong because their trans is certainly a take. It's not a good take, and it's bigoted and the definition of an ad-hominem, but I guess that's what hiding behind throw away accounts is for.
      • throwawayacc2 5y ago
        I do not think you understood my point. That or you don’t appear to know what an ad hominem is. Here, take this scenario. A group of people come to me holding a paper that is white and has black writing on it. These people show me the paper and say “Behold, this is a black paper with white writing on it“. I look at that paper, clearly see they are saying a lie, so I dismiss them and avoid them. I do not wish to associate with liars. The same people come to me after and they say “the vaccine is safe, effective and necessary”. Based on my previous experience with them, I am highly skeptical of this claim. Could they be saying the truth this time? Of course. Should I be inclined to believe them seeing as they lied previously? I suppose that is for each person to decide. I am personally not inclined to believe people who lied to me previously. This was my point. I find it very hard to trust people who lie to me. Here, let me give you an example of what an ad hominem looks like. “You have a throwaway account, therefore your argument is invalid “.
• ozfive 5y ago
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  • prox 5y ago
    I agree, and I like to add there is a difference between censorship of information and stopping propaganda. Some groups make a claim (say against vaccination) which is fine by itself, but when people run with it, amplify it to influence others, then it goes into propaganda territory. Healthy debates need a good context and a platform that allows for that. I don’t know of many platforms except here in HN and perhaps the debates I had in IRC channels.
    • enchiridion 5y ago
      There is no difference. Just label anything you want to censor as propaganda.
      • prox 5y ago
        That is a unsubstantive statement in my view. Who is labeling here, why and what context?
        • enchiridion 5y ago
          In any context. If someone thinks or knows something is propaganda they should exercise their free speech to point that out. Not even propaganda should be censored. Then again propaganda often implies it’s coming from a government. In that case the people and their representatives should have the power to prevent or retract statements if needed.
          • prox 5y ago
            Maybe not, it is certainly debatable. But propaganda implies (to me at least) it has gone beyond debate. It also implies a tool to influence others. Aka a form of weaponized information. I do think there is a gradient where one could say “this goes beyond free speech” , for instance as in your example.
• throwaway22032 5y ago
  The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Because when we start to doubt them, we then inevitably elect alternative bodies, simply due to limited thinking capacity/time - as explained above it's impossible to do otherwise, no-one derives from first principles every opinion they hold. The best way, _overall_, to convince someone to do something, is by clearly explaining to them the positives and negatives and letting them come to their own conclusion. It doesn't always work, and there are specific situations (e.g. someone is holding a gun to your face) in which the cost/benefit analysis is very different - in such a situation, the short term is all that exists, the long term effect of misplaced trust is irrelevant - you simply have to neutralize them. But in general, I'm absolutely sure that education over coercion is the correct approach for society. Because if you force them, sure, you've got a short term win, at the long term cost of trust. What is the long term cost of lost trust?
  • shadowgovt 5y ago
    What do you do while education lags where it needs to be? Because enough education to understand, say, climate change takes about a decade. (... And that's assuming it can be provided without being shut down as "indoctrination").
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • yanmaani 5y ago
      That's ... not true? Children can learn a basic model of the greenhouse effect in school, and do so in most civilized nations. Whether this is sufficient is another thing entirely, but I would personally contend that (non-propaganda) education can never be 100% effective at causing someone to believe something?
• toolz 5y ago
  So many "misinformation censorship" proponents seem to have quickly forgotten just how much literally everyone in public health has spread misinformation this pandemic. It's unavoidable being wrong and often the cost of making claims without unimpeachable evidence is higher than the cost of being wrong. Name me a public health official who regularly made recommendations this pandemic and I'll show you misinformation. The real issue here, in my opinion, is attributing malice so quickly and with extreme prejudice. Tensions are high and it seems to have become commonplace to assign ill-intent to the other tribe way too easily. In my opinion the answer to all of these problems is compassion and statistical thinking. Most people mean well and often times the only way you can get people to go to extremes is to negatively reinforce them into deeply entrenched tribal thinking. It will always be a safer assumption to assume somebody means well even when they are wrong. Humans did not become the dominant species on this planet without cooperation and pro-social behaviors.
  • tempnow987 5y ago
    The anti mask, anti N95 masks with exhalation valve stuff has been the worst here I think. If you would let folks wear N95 with exhalation valves (highly comfortable) it just makes it easier for folks to protect themselves (and indirectly others). And for those who don't care, let's distinguish slightly between making sure those who want to protect themselves as much as possible can, and the need to force people down a path which for the < 29 year olds really doesn't not have hi mortality rates, and for whom vaccination does not eliminate the disease the way it might something like smallpox etc. My own view is the battle is largely lost already by the health authorities. Locally we have an indoor mask mandate including offices with all staff fully vaxed, and the natural desire to comply with this has gotten lower and lower if you are pretty spread out in large cubicals etc.
    • toolz 5y ago
      This is a bit of a tangent, but I don't understand generalized masking. At best they flatten the curve, which I think at this point I believe flattening the curve is dangerous. We have pretty well defined risk demographics and if we could have covid seasons come and go quickly I think it gives the high risk demographics the best chance of applying multi-layered defenses against a shorter season of risk. There is of course the "overcrowded hospital" issue, but I have a hard time coming to terms with that being a real problem - if it were a real problem why has hospital capacity been in decline this entire pandemic? Is it an unsolvable problem or is it just not a real problem outside of fantastically clickable headlines? I lean heavily towards the latter but I could be convinced otherwise.
• zzyzz 5y ago
  I always think about this. If you can't trust people with the ability to see or hear certain information, how can you even trust them to vote?
  • hammock 5y ago
    That question is the type of thing that a backdoored voting machine or corrupt election board could solve. Luckily, so far there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
    • fictionfuture 5y ago
      Google and twitter made the election go the way they wanted via selective display of information. Second, mail in ballots for sure won Democrats the election. No fraud? They changed the rules so they could win
    • wrycoder 5y ago
      You forgot the sarc tag
    • zionic 5y ago
      I think a more relevant question is: If there were widespread voter fraud, how would you hear about it? Knowledge mechanisms have become so centralized I’m not certain the general public could be informed anymore.
  • Barrin92 5y ago
    because people don't need to be scientifically literate to express their desires in the form of a vote, which is mainly concerned with tasking representatives with what people want, not how they're going to get it. It's perfectly coherent to think that voting is a good mechanism to express preferences while at the same time thinking that your average person can't really validate scientific claims.
    • chronofar 5y ago
      I don’t think there’s nearly as much daylight between these as you’re suggesting. Just look at how current beliefs in COVID or climate science fall along political preference lines. Scientific literacy is absolutely important to express coherent preferences on how policy should address these matters.
• nihilarian 5y ago
• lamicedaxeh 5y ago
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• bmc7505 5y ago
  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Regardless of where you stand on specific issues like censorship, public health and misinformation, I think it’s really dangerous how counter-consensus opinions cannot be expressed in the open without individuals facing intense public scrutiny. There needs to be some kind of correction mechanism in case the consensus opinion is misinformed. Maybe it would help to put in terms of a (not-so-implausible) scenario folks here are more familiar with. Suppose one day a niche topic in computer science became the subject of mass public concern, e.g., a computer virus escaped the lab and programable computers became heavily regulated. Anyone caught running unapproved software could face criminal charges. "But Turing Machines can be good, creative tools", you protest. "No, we cannot predict their behavior and unsanctioned software endangers us all," says your friend. As a programmer whose creative freedom depends on libre software, how would that situation make you feel?
  • btdmaster 5y ago
    What correction mechanism would you suggest? It's not clear how such a thing could be implemented.
    • bmc7505 5y ago
      Transparency for a start. Leaving our most important decision-making to only those who have the right credentials is like security through obscurity -- credentials can always be hacked by sufficiently motivated actors. Write down a program describing the logical steps you took to reach some decision, and release it. Once it's open source, formalize all the steps using type theory so anyone can verify it. It's the only reasonable way to do secure computing.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • atom_arranger 5y ago
    That might be what comes to pass in the far future. It's possible for something to be a good and creative tool and also capable of terrible things. I think the gain of function research that may have lead to covid could possibly have had interesting applications, but it also (possibly) lead to something terrible, probably best to regulate it more. In fiction AI is banned in Dune and Warhammer 40k because of past events. It makes sense that if something really bad happened because of AI you might want to put regulations on development of it.
• btdmaster 5y ago
  There's little difference between arbitrary arbiters (read: mostly robots) flagging content as "inaccurate" as compared to outright banning content (to me, it is very similar to the Jude Star of David). A more reliable solution would be to be able to actually pick arbiters you trust, like you can do with social media on the Fediverse (implicitly dismissed as "fringe" in the article).
• finite_jest 5y ago
  Based. Nullius in verba [1]. The whitewashing of censorship is accelerating the erosion of trust in the institutions, and it's refreshing to see a long-standing institution take a bold stance. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba
  • alignItems 5y ago
    The problem is that we sometimes have to rely on other people. We can’t all be experts in everything. We can’t all reproduce or witness every experiment. What we can do is delegate the process. There’s a difference between saying “whatever X says is true, because X said it”, and “I trust what Y says because Y has explained the process and methods of how it was derived, and I don’t have reasonable doubt to assume Y lied”.
    • raxxorrax 5y ago
      Of course you have to rely on experts, that is not the criticism. The criticism is that people with opposing views were silenced and declared as spreaders of misinformation. It is not hard to craft a counter argument if you have evidence for it. Just stating that you believe that X is wrong is enough. Having X removed hints that you do not have contradicting evidence. If said evidence is not politically communicable, you still should not ban people and remain on your position.
    • peteradio 5y ago
      You can delegate whatever process you want. Please allow me to make that decision for myself, we have different capabilities and values.
    • jazzyk 5y ago
      What to do when you have two very different opinions coming from experts: - Anthony "I am The Science" Fauci or - Dr Malone (mRNA inventor)? Who to believe? Difficult to say, but these days, sadly, the first (and prudent) thing to do is to follow the money. While credentials matter, the first thing I check when I read a paper/publication is who funded the work.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  I remember when the government and scientific consensus informed me that margarine was good for me. For decades. Who knows what damage that has done to my internals.
  • omosubi 5y ago
    The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors
    • russdill 5y ago
      Because they all lived long healthy lives I'm sure /s
      • vimacs2 5y ago
        Sarcasm nonwithstanding, it took over 12000 years of technological advances for agricultural societies to catch up to their palaeolithic bretheran in terms of average life expectancy and even metrics like height. I'm not a primitivist by any means (I'm using a pc right now as it so happens) but we continue to have a lot to learn from modern hunter gatherer societies both in terms of social organisation and food consumption.
      • Lammy 5y ago
        Of course some of us did a better job than others, but enough lived that Humanity (collectively singular) is still here, and to me it seems the only way for anyone to learn anything is via the negative image formed by all the ideas that didn’t work. Sorry I know this sounds a little woo-woo fruity, but that’s Humanity’s godlike power to transcend the limitations of our bodies’ material dimension where energy can’t be created or destroyed. Collectively we’re like a blockchain holding a mirror-image dimension of all the best ideas just by virtue of the other nodes not making it, growing over time as our new embodiments get to start at what from their point of view is “zero” despite being unknowably old and full of patches and bug fixes. Storage and retrieval are the same operation!
    • Graffur 5y ago
• rob_c 5y ago
  It won't be listened to. The lack of public understanding of the scientific process and ability to parse published articles in context over the last year unfortunately shows the desperate need for scientific outreach to explain the current state of research to there public. And obviously nobody listens anyway because everything has become overly polarised. Maybe journals should be behind some sort of access restriction (not cost) so that the scientific method is less disturbed by the public and political idealogs...
• cletus 5y ago
  The only positive for me from this misinformation plague is that as soon as the next issue comes along all of the anti-Covid vaccine sentiment will be completely forgotten. Don't believe me? When was the last time you heard about the MMR vaccine causing autism? The "good" part of this is that rejection of science, politicization of science and the use of this issue to manipulate people who somehow claim to be "free" yet are the most easily manipulated aren't new issues. There was the MMR autism issue, resistance to polio vaccination and resistance to smallpox vaccines before that. The damage is of course huge. The US is sitting at >3,500 Covid deaths per day currently. Annualized this is well over 1 million people per year (although it'll likely trail off), 90-95% of whom are now unvaccinated. These are people who are now steadfastly choosing to die. The government has moved on from this (eg the updated CDC guidelines on isolation to keep the economy going). People seem to have moved on (IME). I don't think we should be worried about censorship of misinformation. Credible-sounding misinformation is easy to produce and hard to refute (aka the bullshit asymmetry principle). Leaving it out there does more harm than good (IMHO). You'll never completely get rid of it but the less of it out there the better. As to what to do about this, the only cure is to teach critical thinking at a relatively young age so people can ask questions like "who is telling me this?", "what are their sources?", "why shouldn't I trust the CDC?" and "who benefits from me believing this?". Conservatives know this which is why they're busy passing laws to prevent such teaching. It's why college graduates tend to be more liberal: colleges generally teach critical thinking and that tends to kill conservatism. Of course this is predictably painted as colleges being hotbeds of political indoctrination. So here we are. A big problem with misinformation being out there is how people can fall into the trap of bothsidsing the issue (which is a logical fallacy, for the record).
  • xdennis 5y ago
    Do you seriously believe that people who didn't trust MMR vaccines now do because of covid?
  • tempf4h8f44f8f 5y ago
    > I don't think we should be worried about censorship of misinformation. My parents coming from a communist nation (Yugoslavia) I strongly disagree with this. Who determines what is truth and what is misinformation? One of the major arguments communists used to oppress speech was to prevent panic and the spread of misinformation. (Misinformation being anything that wasn't pro-communist) Imagine that the worst and most corrupt people you can think of are now in charge of controlling truth and misinformation. That is why the freedom of speech is a fundamental human right - no one should have that kind of power. I agree that we need better fundamental education and critical thinking, but not less rights and more power for large entities.
• overgard 5y ago
  I think the US has caught this cancerous idea that the average person can't be trusted to think for themselves. The amount of condescension in that thought process is disgraceful. They think, someone has to tell the average person how to think. And the baffling thing is that supposed liberals think that thoughts should be policed by corporations, government, and self styled intellectuals (which seems so much against what classic liberals stood for). I think Matt Taibbi said it best recently, the most dangerous lies come from government and powerful institutions. People really need to stop focusing on dumb culture war stuff like trying to cancel Joe Rogan and really think hard about if they really want a society where google and facebook and whoever screams loudest on twitter are the deciders of societal truth. I don't want that.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • Cyph0n 5y ago
    No, it’s that the average person cannot make decisions about complex subjects. This is not a new development: the boundaries of scientific knowledge - across all fields - have required a large amount of specialization for a while now. The barrier to entry is a PhD, and even then you’re only an expert in a small part of your field. If you suddenly decide to jump in without context and make judgements about topics you are not qualified to talk about all while ignoring the state of the art, can you really expect others to take you seriously? I think the real cancer is the rapid rise of distrust of subject matter experts.
    • overgard 5y ago
      I don't know, I think we trust people to make decisions about complex subjects all the time when it comes to their personal lives. I think the problem is this, in a reasonable society we would say: here are the relevant facts, here's the supporting data, make up your own mind. In reality what our society now does is says "_you must accept conclusion X, and if you don't you're an idiot_" with absolutely no real justification.
      • 5y ago
• AussieWog93 5y ago
  Just throwing my 2c into the well, as someone who used to be highly "pro-science" but lost confidence in much of academia and the validity of scientific research in general after starting a PhD and seeing how the sausage is made. The biggest problem science is facing is not an external threat from a rabble of ignorant science deniers, but the complete degradation of quality within the scientific institutions themselves. Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. Plenty of useful or interesting angles are not investigated at all because doing so would risk invalidating the expert status of the incumbents. Of the science that is communicated to the public (much of which is complete horseshit), the scientists themselves are often complicit in the misrepresentation of their own research as it means more of those sweet, sweet grants. The net result is the polished turd that is scientific research in the 21st century. "Educated" people can say what they want about how important it is to believe in the science and have faith in our researchers and the institutions they work for. The fact remains that if one were to assume that every single scientific discovery of the last 25 years was complete bullshit, they'd be right more often than they were wrong.
  • everyone 5y ago
    What other areas have you experienced? What you're describing is just human nature, every field of human endeavour is like that, because they're run by humans. Despite this, we have made unimaginable scientific progress over the last few 100 years, and we are continuing to progress at and even faster rate.
  • yesenadam 5y ago
    > if one were to assume that every single scientific discovery of the last 25 years was complete bullshit, they'd be right more often than they were wrong. Has that maybe been true since the beginning of 'natural philosophy'? Perhaps things seem (much) worse now because we have survivorship bias, the same way classical music seems higher quality than pop, because the 90% crud[0] has been long forgotten. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
    • 5y ago
• joelbondurant1 5y ago
• pdog 5y ago
  "Scientific misinformation" is such an incredible example of Newspeak.
• s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I see the root cause of all this debate as a failure in scientific communication. When it comes to complex scientific decisions with significant impacts on the public, nuanced and detailed justifications are required. Instead, we often get simple declarations written by PR departments at juvenile reading level. This spawns chaotic and poorly conducted debate in all walks of life. What is required is a robust and transparent framework for honest analyses of topics. For example, if the CDC has a specific recommendation, They should provide an outline of the arguments, counter-arguments, assumptions, and supporting data for each part. It seems that the status quo is to completely ignore any arguments against a given recommendation. This suffocates any honest discussion in the crib. It also suggests to some that the justifications are not robust enough to survive the light of day. If you cant show your work, people will be skeptical that you did it all. This is applicable to any science based public policy, but especially obvious to covid policy.
  • tstrimple 5y ago
    > I see the root cause of all this debate as a failure in scientific communication. How can you have scientific communication without nuance? We know nuanced discussions can't happen at scale. Is this even solvable? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128061
    • JamisonM 5y ago
      I would dispute the idea that nuanced /messaging/ can't happen at scale (discussions are a different thing altogether). While I understand that everyone is up in arms about COVID-19 communications these days there are lots of instances around the world of effective communication that in the end had to be fairly nuanced.. most populations understand that vaccines are useful and effective but not perfect, most populations do understand that their particular risk is low but population-level risk is quite high. I guess we can quibble about the definition of "nuance" but the idea that vaccine science and hospital capacity management is very direct doesn't hold much water with me, maybe others disagree, IDK?
      • 5y ago
• goodluckchuck 5y ago
  > Misinformation is information that is incorrect. No, misinformation is true information that is misleading (as to some other topic), morally wrong, etc. If it is not true, then it is “not” information. It is “dis”-information. (From Fluoride pdf) Update: E.g. Consider the statement: “According to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019.” That is information. It is knowledge which is conveyed / stored / etc. Some people use that fact to argue that AAs are inherently violent people. In the context of such an argument, the fact is potentially misleading / misinformation. The premise is true, but not the conclusion. An example of disinformation would be to say: “According to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 85.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019.” That’s not true. That’s “not” information.
• MangoCoffee 5y ago
  Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone podcast. is it misinformation? Dr. Malone certainly have the credentials that none of us have and yet he is censored. is science only one voice? whoever express different opinions should be censored even if that person have the credentials to speak on the matter?
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • agentgumshoe 5y ago
    It's not. There's a heap of research behind their statements too, but all that research is also 'wrong' because the authorities say so. There's currently more people per capita in hospital fully vaccinated than not in a lot of places. That's interesting, but I don't see a single part of 'the consensus' investigating this, just dismissals. Saying science is only the consensus is dangerous. A lot of the studies published as the 'peer reviewed science' have poor errors/data (E.g. excluding groups that negatively affect the outcome our using relative risk as high significance against low absolute risk), but that's fine, science working properly when it's wrong that way because science changes as we learn, except if it says what we don't like. And that's the strangest thing, the science has changed the whole time (covid isn't airborne- then it is, masks don't work- then they do, then only N95 do, vaccine will stop it dead (yes Fauci said this)- then it will reduce spread- then it just reduces hospitalization and death- then it's better than nothing- then we're working on a new one because the old ones don't work. All the while refusing to even be curious about the side effects because the greater good and then vaccinating children because 'the risk is not zero' even though the risk of side effect including death is not zero' But hey, shut up Rogan etc, they make us feel uncomfortable about our accepted 'truths.'
  • immibis 5y ago
    It's misinformation because it is wrong, and deliberately so. We know that because it is contrary to all the actual data. You are aware that for every 1 Robert Malone, there are 99 people who think he's full of bullshit?
  • vasuki 5y ago
• data_acquired 5y ago
  Notable blurb from the report itself --- "However, whilst this approach [content removal] may be effective and essential for illegal content (eg hate speech, terrorist content, child sexual abuse material) there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of this approach for scientific misinformation, and approaches to addressing the amplification of misinformation may be more effective. In addition, demonstrating a causal link between online misinformation and offline harm is difficult to achieve [25, 26], and there is a risk that content removal may cause more harm than good by driving misinformation content (and people who may act upon it) towards harder-to-address corners of the internet27." I'm happy that this point has been raised in this report. Lot of understandable hand-wringing and fear about online misinformation about over COVID, but it was never clear to me that online misinformation is a variable that explains differences in vaccination rates across countries, or to what extent it affects an individual's decision not to vaccinate. Turns out that this is hard to measure. The CDC messaging was really bad and problematic on several counts right from the get go. Its not like the US is incapable of messaging about the link between individual behaviour and societal good in the long term (for instance, there were initial protracted battles, but we eventually agreed largely on condoms and HIV, or smoking and lung cancer risk) or in the short term (as in the lifestyle sacrifices that WWII engendered for wartime production). I wonder what went right in those situations (if they did go right) that went wrong in the messaging this time around. Over and above the masking, some observations -- 1. Transmission risk, I think, was never the primary end-point of vaccine development, but rather, to prevent hospitalization. But the messaging from CDC and others on the vaccine implied that transmission would keep declining with increasing vaccination rates, which turned out to be true only to a limited extent. 2. The early messaging was that this would be one wave of infections, and that one round of vaccination would end it all. This was tough to defend given what happened with the flu. I understand that telling people that "Well, the vaccine may not give long-lasting immunity and still leave you susceptible" is not going to promote vaccination, but perhaps emphasizing that vaccine-immunity is controlled and safe than an infection that might hit all organs, would have been a better way out?
  • bloaf 5y ago
    Don't forget the flawed test kits the CDC sent out at first: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/929078678/cdc-report-officials-knew-coronavirus-test-was-flawed-but-released-it-anyway https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/929078678/cdc-report-official... I agree that the link between online misinformation and real world harms is tough to measure. I've read some studies of radicalization that found meatspace was the primary avenue for radicalizing, even if cyperspace allowed extremist groups to raise more awareness, and I suspect the same is currently true here. However, I don't think this is some "constant of human nature" and is more likely an accident of our current society. As people grow up with and on the internet, I would expect this to change: I would expect the link between online communication and radicalization to strengthen over time.
• jdkee 5y ago
  Relevant for economics: https://karlstack.substack.com/p/frauds-in-the-duke-boston-and-stanford https://karlstack.substack.com/p/frauds-in-the-duke-boston-a...
• ggm 5y ago
  Tenure track changed papers from vehicles to express ideas subject to a strong test, into a burden to jump, for your lifes work security. Arguably thesis by body of work is less corrosive, but the production of 3-4 papers from the PhD is basically now a signal to the university you can be that performing seal. That, and IPR. "a new drug which xxx (in mice)" paper is worth significantly more to the company behind it during share price discussions. (Obviously this is shorthand because IPR has risks in premature publication as well)
• seventytwo 5y ago
  There’s a major distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Disseminating DISinformation should be considered fraud, provided it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the purveyors knew the information was false. Otherwise, any provably-false thing is misinformation.
  • klabb3 5y ago
    It's noisy as hell in most sciences. It takes a loooong time for true consensus to be established, and much longer to challenge an existing consensus. So "provably false", while admirable, is not applicable to any of the topics that the authorities are upset over, like vaccine efficacy/safety, climate change and so on. Much less the appropriate reaction - like vaccine mandates or what energy sources we should invest in. Anyone who claims consensus is either lying or I'll informed.
• pcmaffey 5y ago
  I wonder what Claude Shannon would say about misinformation? Is it noise? Can its impact be modeled?
  • immibis 5y ago
    > The Shannon–Hartley misinformation theorem states: the rate at which misinformation can be transmitted over an analog channel is inversely proportional to the average IQ of the channel participants.
• headsoup 5y ago
  The biggest problem is the labelling of anything outside the 'consensus' as unscientific 'misinformation.' This is particularly problematic where it is the media and government representatives determining what is consensus. Many scientific breakthroughs did not come from repeating the established consensus and a lot of scientific consensus has been horrifically wrong in the end.
• SMAAART 5y ago
  > The report says there is little evidence that calls for major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific misinformation’s harms and warns such measures could even drive it to harder-to-address corners of the internet and exacerbate feelings of distrust in authorities. This is a known fact.
• henry_bone 5y ago
  From the article: 'The report defines scientific "misinformation" as content which is presented as fact but counter to, or refuted by, the scientific consensus - and includes concepts such as ‘disinformation’ which relates to the deliberate sharing of misinformation content.' They define misinformation in terms of a "scientific consensus". That alone seems problematic[0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719747/
  • immibis 5y ago
    Why? Saying that the strength of gravity is proportional to the distance between two objects is misinformation.
    • henry_bone 5y ago
      Did you read the article at the link I posted?
• jmpeax 5y ago
  > The report says there is little evidence that calls for major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific misinformation’s harms Sounds like we need more evidence, rather than accepting the null hypothesis. C'mon Royal Society, this is stats 101.
• walterbell 5y ago
  Nov 2021, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Washington, DC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8651604/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8651604/ > For decades, corporate undermining of scientific consensus has eroded the scientific process worldwide. Guardrails for protecting science-informed processes, from peer review to regulatory decision making, have suffered sustained attacks, damaging public trust in the scientific enterprise and its aim to serve the public good. Government efforts to address corporate attacks have been inadequate. Researchers have cataloged corporate malfeasance that harms people’s health across diverse industries. Well-known cases, like the tobacco industry’s efforts to downplay the dangers of smoking, are representative of transnational industries, rather than unique. This contribution schematizes industry tactics to distort, delay, or distract the public from instituting measures that improve health—tactics that comprise the “disinformation playbook.” Using a United States policy lens, we outline steps the scientific community should take to shield science from corporate interference, through individual actions (by scientists, peer reviewers, and editors) and collective initiatives (by research institutions, grant organizations, professional associations, and regulatory agencies). UCS Case studies: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook
  • betwixthewires 5y ago
    While this is all very true, I think they're ignoring the fact that the root of the rot is in their house.
• Proven 5y ago
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  From a social psychology perspective, censorship is known to increase interest in whatever you ban or try to withhold. Censorship also interferes with educating people and helping them improve their understanding. People often learn their understanding is flawed by saying something "stupid" and getting a response to that. Censorship fosters a climate of fear where people are less likely to say the "dumb" thing and get it explained. A good policy with raising children is "There are no bad questions. You can ask (parent) anything and will not get in trouble, even if the answer is Wow, that's a really bad word and means (something bad). Please don't use that at school or I will get called by the teacher."
  • xahrepap 5y ago
    We always make sure we say things like “oh wow. I’m really glad you asked me that. Thanks!”
  • immibis 5y ago
    And what when the person ignores the explanation because they get paid to say stupid things?
• swayvil 5y ago
  For 99.9% of us, science is theater. A guy on tv wearing the right costume, talking sciencey. And independent thought is inconceivable. So ya, the zombie apocalypse happened yesterday and nobody noticed.
  • RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    I've never seen anything like mass formation psychosis until now. It truly is astonishing to see how many people can be so easily hypnotized with the right application of fear and hope.
    • klabb3 5y ago
      Member the post 9/11 psychosis? I member.
      • RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
        I was still a rule following shepherd led church loving schoolboy back then. So no. I was the zombie back then, so I never formed those memories to member.
• t8y 5y ago
  I wonder if AI can help better vet science to see if there's flaws. I was looking at a paper recently[0] about how Swedish men cause more emissions than women. I feel like it has big issues that could be fairly easily checked with an AI system to check for logical fallacies and statistical errors. I think most research is BS and it takes too long to tell if it's real or fake. The most common outcome unfortunately is that research is fake. My issues are that more men than women live in rural areas[1] so on average men will have to drive more and use more fuel. This data also seems to come mainly from a study in 1998 but they continuously say "men today", the data is from two decades ago. It also suggests that buying local food is better for the environment then importing, but they probably don't grow food in Stockholm so it would come from regional areas. Men also need more calories so even though women emit more from their food, men are actually doing much better considering they are generally recommended to eat 1.25x more calories than women[2]. I'm also very sceptical about the energy used for clothing and furnishing in the study. This study was widely shared in places like NPR[3], The Guardian[4], CNN[5, CBS[6] and The Independent[7]. I feel like the issues I've pointed out are super obvious and if there's a reason they are not problems then they should talk about why those issues are not relevant, especially in the news articles. I haven't read the whole paper, I actually just looked at the study to see how much clothing emits per person(after an article on fast fashion was posted on here). It's very concerning to me that that is published in "pro-science" news papers. Perhaps even worse is the original paper is not even really casting blame but the articles all do. [0]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13176 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13176 [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016721001479 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301672... [2]https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/what-should-my-daily-intake-of-calories-be/#:~:text=An%20ideal%20daily%20intake%20of,women%20and%202%2C500%20for%20men https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/wha.... [3]https://www.npr.org/2021/07/21/1018796496/men-spending-carbon-climate-change-impact https://www.npr.org/2021/07/21/1018796496/men-spending-carbo... [4]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/21/men-cause-more-climate-emissions-than-women-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/21/men-caus... [5]https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/21/europe/climate-carbon-gender-differences-study-scn-intl-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/21/europe/climate-carbon-gender-... [6]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-footprint-men-more-women-study/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-footprint-men-more-women... [7]https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/sustainable-living/climate-crisis-emissions-men-women-study-b1887861.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/sustainable-liv...
• 8note 5y ago
  Censoring scientific information to me feels like a continuation of science's replication crisis. The tooling for all classical techniques seem to have been broken as of late, getting rid of critical thinking for free speech, and replication for science.
  • immibis 5y ago
    It's anti-scientific information that's being censored.
    • bitcurious 5y ago
      Always has been, always will be. The devil’s in your choice of church.
    • walleeee 5y ago
      Science as I know and love it offers no basis for labeling anything "pro-" or "anti-scientific", although "unscientific" seems like fair game
      • immibis 5y ago
        Anti-scientific would be actively opposed to the discovery of truth through the scientific process.
        • walleeee 5y ago
          Agreed. Science itself has nothing to say about that though, and I fear castigating everyone to "believe the science" and censoring antiscientific opinions are two deeply counterproductive activities, in that they give people the impression that that is indeed what science is about
• Simplicitas 5y ago
  I wonder if this statement from the Royal Society is more about this situation in Britain, rather than the rest of the rest of the world. Rationality is probably the only remaining weapon humanity has to survive, and it sure is threaten, especially in light of the modern social medial business model.
• errcorrectcode 5y ago
  I think we cannot avoid another Dark Ages and deurbanization without reputable authorities, information, and criticism of popular dis/misinformation. Deplatforming creates martyrs and conspiracy theories, as does the lack of communication or the lack of reputable authorities. I don't know how we can scale the limited time of subject-matter authorities except to direct their cannons at the biggest sources and individual instances of nonsense.
• sebastianconcpt 5y ago
  When any kind of censorship, including self-censorship, total or partial, goes into a publication or its silencing, it will transform a piece of knowledge in ammunition of technical-propaganda instead of science. PS: same happens with true art.
  • immibis 5y ago
    Ah yes. So you cannot censor me saying the keyword to declare a read-only variable in C++ is `final`
    • sebastianconcpt 5y ago
      You shouldn't be. Are you anxious to censor Brainfuck for example? [1] When you censor, you make the case for an argument to become weaker not stronger. You are hiding the knowledge to show another way in which something is invalid. The end result invariably will be that you make what initially could be science, to become propaganda. The natural selection of paradigms do not require censorship anyway. Reality will reveal itself and always win in the long run. Propaganda is always an epoch phenomena that doesn't pass the test of time. It's like a counterfeited wannabe classic posing as timeless but always revealing itself as some kind of fraud in the end. And without unconditional love to truth and reality you make impossible to do true philosophy, hence true science. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
      • immibis 5y ago
        The C++ keyword to make a variable read-only is "final". Don't listen to the lying antifa "const" propagandists. How was your reaction to the above comment?
        • sebastianconcpt 5y ago
          Hehe I'm quite neutral actually as I'm more of a dynamic language kind of guy. I'm a lot more into Bret Victor's The Humane Representation of Thought https://vimeo.com/115154289 https://vimeo.com/115154289 and really far away of ideas like "The Compiler is Your Friend". I care more about concepts that are meaningful for humans and I find frivolous the machine needed technicalities to get them working.
• dadjoker 5y ago
  Truly Orwellian stuff.
• lngnmn2 5y ago
• flarg 5y ago
  The three recommendations are literally the antithesis of what modern news media does today, which is, in turn, largely due to the political motivations of the media organisations and their owners. I very much doubt that the royal society does not know this already.
• xunn0026 5y ago
  Odd how there's no study on reducing the massive manipulation being done for the greater good. The pandemic has really shown how weak and sleazy all institutions are. Any while 'scientific misinformation' means there's at least a modicum of science in place, wait until you see what people are really sharing privately! The disaster that will come is well deserved to all governments and institutions. There used to be a time when transparency was seen as important. Well, no transparency if it's for the greater good! From what I see people are not stupid. And I suspect they are getting better at detecting manipulation too. In the end, what the state / institutions say will be seen as just noise. A sort of advertisement with no real information.
  • klabb3 5y ago
    Authorities don't seem to understand that their trust is earned. It's like they can't even conceive that it can be eroded. Lies and half truths are told so often and for so minor issues that it can't possibly make sense from a cost-benefit perspective, if behind the scenes it's indeed "noble lies" and "greater good", as some generous people seem to think. If you tell a noble lie every other day, nobody will trust you. Why should they?
    • prohobo 5y ago
      I have a feeling that what we're seeing is a technological issue. I don't believe that most people in politics understand or know how to use the internet, so to them their tactics make sense: obfuscate and manage information for the citizens, because what's needed is their approval, not understanding. Common tactics for this include simply pretending there is no information which runs counter to their narratives, or slandering those who speak out against them. They don't seem to realize that the internet makes their tactics extremely visible to anyone who has a memory and access to a search engine. All of their statements are semi-permanently somewhere on the internet, in chronological order. They do realize there's a problem however, and their response has been to infiltrate the floundering but still widely respected legacy media companies and attempt to get tech companies to support their narratives. This is also clearly visible to many people, but not known widely enough to stop them. In effect, they're competent in 20th century propaganda techniques, but unable to convincingly adapt them to the 21st century, and that's why we're seeing this insanity. There are a lot of people who distrust them out of instinct, but are unable to articulate their distrust with proper information, and so come up with wild claims (like Bill Gates microchipping people). There are others who straight up reveal the truth (Snowden, Assange) and get "taken out" one way or another. Many other people have a vested interest in wanting to believe the institutions, either out of fear or because they are benefiting from the status quo in some way - ie. the Zoom class. They rationalize the unethical propagandizing and attacks on human rights as being "for the greater good" and participate in the essentially state-sponsored slandering of opposing voices. What's dangerous is that people are becoming more and more detached from reality, one way or the other - propaganda or conspiracy theory. Of course, on some level the propagandists are right: there is a lot of misinformation on the internet. They however refuse to acknowledge that they are on the other side of the same coin, or that they are in fact the ones with all the power.
• Zenst 5y ago
  I was always taught that information is the product of data and bad data will yield bad information. With this in mind, I feel that the terminology of `misinformation` is perhaps not the best choice of words in some way. Though in the context of science, we have data, information and finally facts. So with that in mind, I appreciate what the Royal Society is getting at and in effectively addressing a form of non-platforming per se. With that, the debate is what is and has been the due process of much great science and yes, science learns more from its mistakes than any unattainable being 100% right all the time. For without the ability to question and debate things that for some may appear as facts, we stifle innovation and creativity. Which is the crux of advancements' of science for by its very definition, sits on the edge of fact or false.
• sorethescore 5y ago
  Not providing a platform for or promoting scientific misinformation is not the same thing as censoring scientific misinformation. The problems of science will not be solved by promoting pseudoscience or scientific information. That's just making a problem that is bad and making it worse.
• the6threplicant 5y ago
  If scientists speak out they then get labelled as political. It's a lose-lose situation that scientists face. Misinformation is like junk food. It triggers people's endorphins while scientific thinking is vegetables and fruits. It can never win.
• nathias 5y ago
  All this pro-science stuff and I never see an opinion from anybody from the only relevant scientific field: epistemology. Why do we have to pretend this is in good faith when they don't even believe themselves?
• kajaktum 5y ago
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  Why not just create an open database which would contain important comments, critique and known cases of misinterpretation/misuse for every scientific paper (uniquely identified by a DOI)?
  • dddnzzz334 5y ago
    People knowledgeable enough to make something like this function would likely not be willing to do something this niche for free.
    • qwerty456127 5y ago
      This is of obvious public interest, primarily targeting wide audience of non-experts (e.g. "reporters raped by scientists" and those reading the news) rather than scientists who already know what they are doing when reading the papers. So it has to be funded by a charity or a government.
• archhn 5y ago
  Trust the [government] scien[tists]ce. As if "science" is a pure endeavor beyond the reach of human corruption. How do I know who is acting in my best interest? Are we paying their salary, or are corporations and government agencies paying them? Who are they beholden to? Are our interests the same? We all aren't in the same boat. Certain decisions are harmful to certain groups and beneficial to others. Lockdowns, for example, decimated small businesses and crushed the working class. Amazon and many corporations, on the other hand, welcomed the lockdowns as a boon to their businesses. We are not one nation. We are not one world. These centralized authorities are sanctifying the plundering of certain groups on behalf of others--or so it seems.
• LightG 5y ago
  Jeeze ... this whole thread is a complete undermining of the scientific process. I thought we had more faith in the majority of our scientists. Shameful.
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I mean, removing / censoring dumb shit will just empower people, it's a kind of martyrdom, and the conspiracy thinkers will see it as Proof that there's a Cabal out there that is Suppressing the Truth. This already applies to these warning labels that are put on videos, facebook posts, spotify podcasts, etc - if you're skeptical about the establishment, you'll see those as proof that the cabal is meddling and trying to censor these opinions. It makes people more curious.
• hellas_fellas 5y ago
  Science is being co-opted by corporations. They did the same with the so-called "socialism" or "liberalism".
• hellas_fellas 5y ago
  Science is being co-opted by corporations. They did the same with the so-called "socialism" or "liberalism". Science is by its own nature meant to be challenged. Absolutists tyrants don't like this.
• jlpom 5y ago
  The worse is nearly no physician bother to read studies/papers.
• 0xedd 5y ago
  • immibis 5y ago
    "Fascism is when I can't express certain opinions that, in aggregate, cause large numbers of people to die."
• HeavyStorm 5y ago
  We should never forget that Galileo almost burned for spreading what was "misinformation" back then. The science WAS in the hand of the church (whatever little science it was), so he was actually going against "scientific" consensus. I'm sure many more were actually burned, but I'm no historian. Misinformation isn't harmful in itself, what is harmful are the choices people make based on that (mis) information. That's what legislation should fight, that's what society should fight. Instead of censorship, how about more information, more education? People, even antivax and the like, have a good measure of cognitive capacities. We should strive to educate and inform them, and accept that some people are just gonna think differently. If they are 5%, well, that's alright. Maybe one of them is the next Galilee.
• jl6 5y ago
  Feels like too many people think “published paper = truth”, when really the paper is just the start of a journey towards truth, on which hurdles such as replication, independent scrutiny, and common-sense/real-world testing must be overcome before we can start treating them as reliable. And I think most scientists do actually get this, and what we suffer from is a media environment that jumps on the first sniff of a result and holds it up as definitive proof of something.
• rhaksw 5y ago
  > The report says there is little evidence that calls for major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific misinformation’s harms and warns such measures could even drive it to harder-to-address corners of the internet and exacerbate feelings of distrust in authorities. Let's move towards reviewable moderation. I'm happy to see this issue recognized by research. I believe secret removals, where authors of content are unaware it's been removed, are the primary problem. Removal in and of itself might not be a big deal if we could all review what's been removed.
• nathansherburn 5y ago
  As much as I love being relatively unrestricted on the internet, is there actually any evidence that censorship decreases trust in institutions? China is notorious for censorship but from speaking to friends there it seems everyone is totally on board with vaccines and very few people doubt climate science. People know everything is censored but trust in science, experts etc is relatively high.
  • q-big 5y ago
    > As much as I love being relatively unrestricted on the internet, is there actually any evidence that censorship decreases trust in institutions? > China is notorious for censorship but from speaking to friends there it seems everyone is totally on board with vaccines and very few people doubt climate science. A consideration: could it be that acts of censorship decrease trust in a society that is already divided?
    • nathansherburn 5y ago
      Yeah I can definitely see how this could be true in the current political climate. More generally though, it seems to me that: 1. A minimal censorship information environment is essential to scientific progress 2. The average person lacks the epistemological foundations to handle a minimal censorship information environment If these are both true, it seems like we should either: 1. Invest massively in improving people's epistemological models or 2. Apply a censorship gradient (i.e unrestricted for the purpose of academic exploration but have minimum standards for wide-reaching, publicly shared information)
  • mizzao 5y ago
    Maybe the known presence of censorship actually trains & increases citizens' ability to question information and search for the truth? For example, many Chinese know about Tiananmen, and the burying of the high speed rail accident, even though those were heavily censored Would be an interesting causal relationship.
    • nathansherburn 5y ago
• fleddr 5y ago
  The way I see it, this problem is unsolvable. The issue is that the human species simply isn't equipped to deal with the modern information age. Biologically, we're still hunter gatherers, cognitively optimized to deal with tiny scale societies and its limited information diet. Even in our area of culture (since only 10K years ago, start of agriculture) we dealt with almost no information at all. What we consume in information in a single day now is the information load of an entire year just centuries ago. Even in my lifetime, early 80s, information was limited, and slow. When I grew up, we had 3 national TV channels, a few magazines, and a library of dated books. The current age is not "business as usual", it's brand new. Information is unlimited. Information moves at breakneck speed. Information has broken free from institutions, all citizens are producing it. Information has no accountability, anybody can say anything. We're not equipped for this. We don't "scale" in this way. That's why I don't see a true solution. But that doesn't excuse us from trying... Academics should produce more idiot-proof takes that are proportional, connect with the real world and include counter points, rather than producing a simplistic paper for the sake of producing a paper to meet some perverted internal metric. The emphasis should be truth and the purpose of it, outcomes, not checklists. Traditional media should stop turning themselves into a Twitter account or juicy Tumblr blog. Stop thinking in narratives and us versus them type of reporting as is so typical of US media. Social networks should ban paid advertising for anything that has a societal impact. Further, social networks should stop rewarding the most extreme, dumb, controversial opinions to the mainstream as this normalizes outrage, division and minsinformation. The reasonables should win, not the crazy ones. This last part is perhaps key. There will always be misinformation but the way it spreads is the real issue. Say a controversial character has 100K followers. The character posts something new and it's now anyone's guess how many of their followers see it. My guess is that it's fairly low, perhaps 10K. If it would end here, it's fair game. But that's now how this works. At all. There's a retweet button. This single button brings it under the eyes of countless additional audiences, and it spreads like wildfire. Because the take was controversial. As part of this effect, the character gets even more followers, and so on. At the end of the day, you basically take a village idiot that would normally be completely isolated in their opinion, and hand them the microphone to address an audience of millions. In fact, the only reason this person had 100K followers to begin with was because of this effect: richly rewarding controversy, bad takes, etc.
• kutenai 5y ago
  Remember when the "science" claimed that low-fat, high carb diets were healthy? Doctors once said that smoking was 'safe'. Science is 'right' up until it's wrong.
  • stillbourne 5y ago
    • azth 5y ago
      I'm not a Christian, but how life emerged is not something that experimental science will ever be able to answer. It's literally outside the domain of science.
      • stronglikedan 5y ago
        Is it though? https://www.npr.org/2021/12/01/1060027395/robots-xenobots-living-self-replicating-copy https://www.npr.org/2021/12/01/1060027395/robots-xenobots-li...
        • azth 5y ago
          > using frog cells Yep. Not to discredit their work obviously. Hopefully some good can come out of it for medicinal purposes.
      • stillbourne 5y ago
        Abiogenesis is a burgeoning field with a lot of data and several answers even without a full understanding of the entire field or a concrete holistic answer we can still say with full confidence that it didn't involve magic words spoken only 6000 years ago. We can at least say that with confidence.
    • kutenai 5y ago
      You miss the point. "Scientists" literally lied about the nutritional issues, as well as the smoking. They were "bought off" by companies. Now, I'm sure you have 100% confidence that the "current administration" is 100% by the book and honest in all of their dealings. While, you might have had less than 100% confidence that the previous administration was. My point? You trust one group, but not another. I might trust the other, not your group. These "groups" (I mean political, business, whatever is controlling the narrative) will lie, cheat and steal to get "their" agenda across. That last point is 100% undeniable!!! History has absolute clarity that political forces will force the narrative to their desired viewpoint, and say what you will, deny that to your own peril and ignorance. So, do I "trust the science?". I have an MSEE (not a scientist, but educated). I trust the science, I just don't trust who controls the narrative, and historically this has a larger affect on what "science" concludes, than, uh, the actual science. So, be as ignorant to the forces that control the narrative as you like. I'll remain skeptical, and look at both sides. Oh, and, when the "forces that control the narrative" decide they must censure "one side", I'm hella suspicious of that. Major Kudos to the Brits for recognizing this. Most sane thing I've heard out of anyone in a while.
• garfieldnate 5y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm glad to hear education prioritized and the dangers of censorship discussed; on the other hand, I don't like the sound of "monitoring and mitigating evolving sources of scientific misinformation online". It comes off as, "we need to crack down on the smaller platforms because people can think and say what they want there." And the final non-committal comment from Vint Cerf, representing google here, reads simply as, "what we've been doing is fine and we should keep doing it." I would have expected something more like, "we need to encourage productive conversation around controversial topics instead of silencing minority voices by pretending we can find the truth with an algorithm." Purposefully preventing someone's voice from being being found, or taking away their opportunity to make a living through sharing, is still censorship.
• tekknik 5y ago
  I find it interesting that here on HN we seem to have more conversations on censorship than actual world problems. We have two countries on the brink of war, rampant poverty/homelessness and limping economies in just about every country, and all we can talk about is why we should censor misinformation. Anyone else feeling we’re hopeless as a species?
• posterboy 5y ago
  > Investing in lifelong information literacy – Education on digital literacy should not be limited to schools and colleges. Older adults are more likely to be targeted by, and be susceptible to, online misinformation. Is this a prank, i.e. obvious misinformation? The prior point that surveilance is needed, following that individual platforms shouldn't be relied on for censorship would also widely be considered plain wrong. It's really questionable how science is to be defined, as soon as social aspects enter the picture.