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I give credit to this site for attempting to put a high level of effort into this article, but I'd argue that at least some of the things they highlight as misi

I give credit to this site for attempting to put a high level of effort into this article, but I'd argue that at least some of the things they highlight as misinformation-bugs are arguably accurate-information features. Don't forget that "misinformation" is just one side of the Bad-Information Coin: the other side is censorship and propaganda. Take the first 2 points. > 1. On Tiktok, anyone can publish and republish any video, and stolen or reposted clips are displayed alongside original content. This is arguably a great thing when you consider that misinformation and censorship/propaganda lead to the same outcome and features that make it harder to repost "stolen" clips can lead to idea censorship. If we can't critically examine and provide commentary on a news clip, for example, then if the original poster gets anything important wrong (either through willing lies or unwilling errors), you're screwed. > 2. Pseudonyms are popular on TikTok, making it harder to discern who a poster is, where they are, and whether their video content is original or real. TikTok's approach seems better for avoiding censorship than approaches like Twitter that has verification checkmarks in place. Every user is effectively standing on equal ground and only the quality of their content matters. In practice, Twitter's approach functions more like a marketing badge than anything: where opinions get amplified simply because the original poster has an attention-getting blue-checkmark

giuliomagnifico 5y ago
To me both the two points look a way to amplify the “not correct information”. They’re not saying that all the features are necessarily wrong or bad but just that with these features is very simply to post misinformation. I understand what you are saying, but in some situations it’s better to have a human that put a blue-checkmark that can fail 1/10 than having 5/10 fake accounts. I mean this is contextualized to this war situation.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > in some situations it’s better to have a human that put a blue-checkmark that can fail 1/10 than having 5/10 fake accounts Speaking strictly from a utilitarian perspective, I'm not so sure if a handful of blue checkmarks getting it wrong some small percentage of the time (and I'd argue that it's not quite that small) is less bad for the world than lots of random people getting it very wrong a far greater percentage of the time. The reason for that is power and influence, a journalist has a lot of it and a random person has close to none. A random Joe Schmoe who invents some conspiracy theory about the Amish's secret moon lasers controlling global weather patterns after an evening with Quaaludes and Tequila does not have any influence. But a bad journalist can panic the world into accepting bad ideas that are actually taken seriously. To me, the correct approach for finding as close to accurate information as possible is to not put professional journalists or anybody on a pedestal and distrust all information until proven and verified from multiple competing sources.

giuliomagnifico 5y ago

To me both the two points look a way to amplify the “not correct information”. They’re not saying that all the features are necessarily wrong or bad but just that with these features is very simply to post misinformation. I understand what you are saying, but in some situations it’s better to have a human that put a blue-checkmark that can fail 1/10 than having 5/10 fake accounts. I mean this is contextualized to this war situation.

logicalmonster 5y ago
> in some situations it’s better to have a human that put a blue-checkmark that can fail 1/10 than having 5/10 fake accounts Speaking strictly from a utilitarian perspective, I'm not so sure if a handful of blue checkmarks getting it wrong some small percentage of the time (and I'd argue that it's not quite that small) is less bad for the world than lots of random people getting it very wrong a far greater percentage of the time. The reason for that is power and influence, a journalist has a lot of it and a random person has close to none. A random Joe Schmoe who invents some conspiracy theory about the Amish's secret moon lasers controlling global weather patterns after an evening with Quaaludes and Tequila does not have any influence. But a bad journalist can panic the world into accepting bad ideas that are actually taken seriously. To me, the correct approach for finding as close to accurate information as possible is to not put professional journalists or anybody on a pedestal and distrust all information until proven and verified from multiple competing sources.