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All Twitter users in the US will start to see crowdsourced fact checks on tweets
- NDizzle 4y agoOh boy. Crowdsourced facts. More equals better than, right?! Ridiculous.
- was_a_dev 4y agoOn a platform that is drowning in bot activity. The threshold for abuse is on the floor
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago"crowdsourced" from "reputable" sources, right? ;)
- mblat0 4y agoSnopes and the ADL
- tjpnz 4y agoIf I had enough followers and was part of this program what prevents me from harassing another user via notes and getting my followers to mark my note as helpful?
- krapp 4y agoIf you have enough followers, what prevents you from harassing another user anyway? Crowdsourced, targeted harassment already happens all the time. This seems like it would just be a more convoluted and troublesome means to an already available end.
- ketzo 4y agoBut this would be like putting an official “sanctioned by Twitter” badge on that harassment.
- bakugo 4y agoThe “sanctioned by Twitter” badge already existed before this, it's called the verification checkmark. Many checkmarked accounts break twitter's rules on a daily basis, you can get away with almost anything if you're on the same side of the political spectrum as them.
- tjpnz 4y agoPlacement would also be an issue under such a scenario. Normally you would need to scroll a bit before seeing "ratios" and other stupid shit but now that's guaranteed to be above the fold. Presumably this will also work if I've chosen to restrict replies.
- mikebonnell 4y agoAs far as I can tell from testing Birdwatch earlier is that you can't proactively choose new notes and can only act on ones that are designated for you.
- seibelj 4y agoHow will this work when reality is partisan? The Hunter Biden laptop story was a debunked conspiracy by the “experts” until it wasn’t, and the recent Chinese election data stolen “conspiracy” (as declared by the NYT) turned out to be true. Yet day after day the stories about Trump and Russia were blasted by major media… until that was totally debunked. It’s like one side decides what is true and the other side is conspiracy until the facts come out, then it’s forgotten completely into the memory hole.
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoThe same way democracy works. Shitty, but less shitty than any other way.
- anon291 4y agoDemocracy requires a free press and free distribution of ideas. Censorship of salient, truthful political information by private or public parties is dangerous to democracy.
- adabyron 4y agoI don't know these cases well but if Twitter (or someone) is able to compile the known information at the time & append as new insights become available that would be the most ideal way I can think of. Hopefully they can be concise & have at minimum, two differing sides sharing non-opinionated references. Or at least stating the leniencies of said references. Though this can still be very hard & lead to many rabbit holes of "Further reading".
- noahtallen 4y agoSome of the conspiracies didn’t conclude the way you say they do, or at least not completely. As far as I can tell, the current “consensus” is that the Hunter Biden laptop, while real, can’t prove any unethical behavior on the part of the president. And the Russian stuff — while Muller couldn’t prove that Trump asked Russia for help (beyond the video of him asking for it in camera, perhaps as a joke), it is still true that Russia played a severe part to helping Trump’s campaign. So in my opinion the overall narrative of those stories (Russia interfered in the election to help Trump to his delight and Hunter Biden’s laptop doesn’t mean much) are still true to this day. I think the prevailing narratives when the stories break leaned on facets that were more true: Russia was doing very concerning things. This laptop doesn’t contain proof of much of anything. Trump stated on camera he wanted Russia’s help. Etc.
- _fat_santa 4y agoEh, in practice I don't have an issue with this, in principle though I disagree because they are targeting "misinformation" and not "disinformation". How I see it, disinformation is flat out false and fake. With misinformation though it starts getting subjective, a headline may be correct when you think about it one way, or misinformation if you think about it another way.
- bergenty 4y agoI feel like in practice this may be ripe for brigading.
- jimcavel888 4y ago
- mattw2121 4y agoI was recently invited to be a lead on Nextdoor (I know, I know) and accepted so that I could peek behind the curtain. Their process is that any flagged content is voted on by leads to Leave it, Possibly Remove, or Remove. What I've observed is that posts that completely break the rules still have a 50/50 split. My point being that many people are not able to objectively look at something and make a decision. Their opinions and feelings will always get mixed in. Twitter, good luck with the crowdsourcing :).
- bombcar 4y agoSlashdot had moderation and metamoderation and it worked ... for awhile. Part of the reason was you could still browse at -1 if you wanted to, so there were chances for things that got "attacked" to bubble back up. Not sure if it helped kill it or if that was incidental. The "rules" always have interpretations and most people don't steelman posts that disagree with them.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoSlashdot's moderation/metamoderation worked fairly well at policing the tone of the conversation, but was worthless for factual accuracy. Troll, flamebait and funny moderations were accurately applied, but the insightful moderation was given mostly given to comments which confirmed the biases of the community. Past tense because I mostly stopped going to slashdot when cmdrtaco left. I don't really know how the moderation has been going since then.
- bombcar 4y agoMost moderation ends that way but yeah, it’s a hollowed out shell of itself now.
- cortesoft 4y ago> My point being that many people are not able to objectively look at something and make a decision. Their opinions and feelings will always get mixed in. Isn't the idea that individuals will have biases, but on average they will cancel each other out when aggregated together? I don't think that is necessarily true, but I think it is overly simplistic to say that individuals having biases means the consensus of the crowd can't work.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoHmm. This sounds like there could be a positive feedback loop buried in here somewhere. Something like: 1. Status quo position is X. 2. New information comes in that says Y. 3. People tweet Y. 4. Crowd sourced "fact check" says that Y is false. 5. Twitter consensus becomes even more certain that X is true.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoIn my experience it ends up just being more divise, the more an institution that one group of people do not trust doubles down on a story the more likely they are to become convinced of the opposite position, whereas those that thought it was true become more convinced. To quote Dr. Robert Calidini in his book Pre-Suasion. "The media is great at telling people what to talk about, but terrible at telling people what to think about it.", basically you can use media streams to get people to focus on something but you cannot use it to get them to believe a certain thing about it. The results will be more polarization as one group of people on any issue will have less trust in twitter, and the other side will use the proof of everyone knowing it is true. As I've been reading a recent book about the USSR right before and through WW2 (Ivan's war, good book by the way highly recommend it) it shows how the purpose of propaganda isn't about making you thinking a certain way, but rather making you feel isolated and convince you, that you are alone.
- rubyist5eva 4y agoThis is not how facts work, JFC.
- bombcar 4y agoI mean it somewhat IS how Wikipedia works (don't peel back the curtain on anything remotely controversial, however).
- rubyist5eva 4y agoI don't consider Wikipedia an authoritative source for anything at all. Looking at sourcing for many articles easily reveals the inherent biases of the editors.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoWow crowdsourcing truth that's super great. I see no problems at all with this. It's not like angry partisans on one side would create and push fake stories and news about another horrible atrocity that person of an unpopular group that would lead to mass violence and genocide. Nothing like that has ever happenned with social media tools in countries like Mynamar. I for one am worried though about what if bad people try to use mass brigading to flag blatantly true information, like how the COVID vaccine is 90% effective at preventing you from getting COVID. I think there should be some official oversight by a body like the federal government or something to make sure that only real "misinformation" gets flagged. Like for example it is well known that many hateful Neo-Nazi racist homophobic Klan members went out of their way to post bad reviews of the Amazon Rings of Power series because they were racist, bigoted, and radical reactionaries that want to destroy the foundations of America, then hid it behind compliants of "poor storywriting" and "glacial pacing". In this example Amazon stepped in to eliminate information that was not correct, because the people who shared it were bad people. We know they were bad people that wanted bad things because they didn't like what was good, and it was good because it did good things. This is a digression but highlights my point. I think this is a good thing to crowdsource fact checking, but should be reviewed by an official board to ensure that things don't get fact checked as misinformation that are actually 100% true, such as the efficacy of masks, or the fact that terrorists far right Neo-Nazis laid siege to the capital of Canada for months, and that things that are clearly misinformation such as questioning at all the reliability of masks, or discussing the impact of the COVID lockdown. Get flagged appropriately. I also think twitter should do nothing about the bot problem that has been clearly evidenced to be happening on there since the person that shared that leak is probably a closet Neo-Nazi homophone since he associates with Elon Musk who is a billionaire and inherently evil.
- aschearer 4y agoEdgy.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoBecause crowdsourcing fact checks works great for reddit, right?
- throwaway22032 4y agoErrr. And how exactly does the general public know whether something is true in order to vote on it? If they knew it was false this wouldn't be an issue to begin with...
- HKH2 4y agoWhat do you think of Urban Dictionary?
- MichaelCollins 4y ago90% of the terms and definitions in urban dictionary read like something a snickering teenager thought up on the spot, not real slang that is/was actually circulating prior to (or after) being added to the site. It's fine because nobody should be taking urban dictionary seriously in the first place; it's just an online amusement. Real dictionaries, even crowdsourced ones like Wiktionary, don't use voting systems like urban dictionary's.
- kjeetgill 4y agoAre you reading it top to bottom somehow that you're even coming into contact with slang you haven't heard used? In my experience it's always filled me in on the precise meaning I've needed.
- pmichaud 4y agoI guess the intuition is that it works like a market to converge on truth, but of course there’s no skin in the game and the metrics are all wrong for actual market dynamics.
- robszumski 4y agoI saw one of these recently on a tweet about an Amtrak line between LA and San Diego being shutdown. Takeaway: they were giving up on the line. The note on the tweet had the additional context that it was temporary and there was a bus substitute. The takeaway is completely different with this context. I appreciated it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 4y agoI've learned the mob, no matter their political beliefs, doesn't know a damn thing as a group. If there is a technical answer, it used to be possible to get a correct answer, but that is almost always through the view of some political leaning. Frankly, given the utter sh?t-show of YouTube content warnings[0], I have no faith in this crud. This just seems like a bots paradise to influence opinion and ban people. 0) the number of videos that have no mention of COVID that have COVID warnings is just staggering. Along with the Moon Conspiracy warning on a video of the X-15 is just brain dead.
- akira2501 4y agoI have never in my entire life expected the truth from the crowd. Why on earth would you do that if truth was truly your concern? These proposals seem to ignore this basic reality. They also presume that peoples primary desire in communication with one another is truth. Our entire system of language belies that idea entirely. The condescension of it all gets to me as well, as if you give everyone the unvarnished truth that they would all make the same decisions based upon that information. It's a parochial desire that could only be held by government agents or embarrassed billionaires. It has no true purpose for society as a whole.
- Kye 4y ago"Wisdom of the crowd" used to be one of the big selling points of the internet. Like most early optimism, it collapsed on contact with reality as the internet grew.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> "Wisdom of the crowd" used to be one of the big selling points of the internet. I don't think this was true until sometime in the 00s when voting systems were popularized. I don't recall anybody talking about crowd wisdom and hiveminds in the context of IRC chatrooms, mailing lists, or geocity pages. There was an understanding that whoever you were talking to might be smart or might be stupid; there was no crowd mechanism to put false trust in.
- ynbl_ 4y ago[flagged]
- Turing_Machine 4y ago> the computing nightmares the right tried to implement in the 90s like clipper chip will roll in By "the right" you mean "the Clinton administration"?
- ynbl_ 4y agomeh you get the point
- Turing_Machine 4y agoI get the point that you made a provably false claim. The Clinton administration was behind the Clipper chip, while many on the right (including uber-right figure John Ashcroft) were opposed to it.
- ynbl_ 4y agonah i actually stated a random hazy example off the top of my head, assuming the right did it, as its the kind of shit the right tried to pull in the 90s.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bl_valance 4y agoIt really ruins the magic of some (obvious)joke posts when you see a damn fact check box. This "feature" I see it in the same way as warning labels - "Caution: Hot" - treats people as if they can't practice critical thinking and common sense.
- krapp 4y ago> This "feature" I see it in the same way as warning labels - "Caution: Hot" - treats people as if they can't practice critical thinking and common sense. History demonstrates that, for the most part, people can't. Even Hacker News - a community of people who should "know better" - is infested with conspiracy theories, disinformation and bullshit. And the general public trusts Facebook memes more than the mainstream media. The meme is that the people who were saying never to trust anything you read on the internet in the 90s are now saying Biden is three lizards in a trenchcoat. So here we are.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoGrowing up I knew a kid who's leg had been run over by a lawn mower. He still had it, but half his calf was missing and he had horrific scaring. I never saw the lawn mower that chewed his leg up, but I'd bet it had warning stickers on it like all mowers do. Don't stick your fingers in the blades, and certainly don't run over your younger brother with it.. The warning stickers won't fix stupid, but everything dangerous gets warning stickers anyway because lawyers make bank throwing lawsuits around whenever stupid people do stupid things to themselves. The stickers exist for liability reasons, not to protect people. The stickers are magical wards meant to keep the lawyers away.
- krapp 4y agoThese fact checks and warning labels are semantically different enough that arguments from equivalence only work to a point. We know that people can be influenced by what they read on social media, and social media platforms aren't (currently) legally liable for misinformation spread by their users.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- monksy 4y agoOh wonderful. The state sponored proganda group will mark things in mass.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoWe need laws to ban the government and particularly the military from sockpuppetting online. Crowdsourced fact-checking with no accountability for those doing the voting makes this problem even more severe.
- pyuser583 4y agoI guess that’s better than AI? I’ve seen some major AI errors I. YouTubes fact checking.
- specialist 4y agoTruthiness is not and has never been the problem. Virality is. Let the lunatics say whatever they want (within the law). Stop promoting it. Eliminate the algorithmic recommenders (automated hated machines). If that's not enough, start eliminating the other dopamine hits; remove (or nerf) retweets, likes, and whatever other gamification features there are. As for "truthiness", the workable alternative to factchecking is authenticity. Social medias should enable the following: share your work cite your sources sign your name Bonus points for enabling: errata retractions This isn't hard. All the monkey motion about fraud prevention and factchecking only serve to preserve and protect the hate machine.
- karaterobot 4y ago> Birdwatch notes only appear on tweets if they’re deemed helpful by people who tend to disagree with each other. That's kind of an interesting twist on the game mechanic! I really hope it works. I'll continue to not use Twitter either way.
- onionisafruit 4y agoWho would agree to be an unpaid volunteer to moderate tweets? If you aren't getting paid then you have some other motivation to do the work. I suspect a lot of people who end up in this program will be motivated to promote an agenda.
- bhupy 4y agoI think you answered your own question. Who would agree to be an unpaid volunteer to moderate tweets? Ideologues who wish to further their agenda.
- supergirl 4y agoMusk recent tweets would probably get the flag[0], so he'll probably remove this quite quickly once he is in charge. [0] anything controversial will get the flag if it reaches the censors. in this case it's about Russia-Ukraine war and what Musk is saying is not on the pre-approved list of allowed phrases.
- intrasight 4y agoI like the court analogy. The court determines facts. The jury determines truth. So "crowd sourced truth" seems more appropriate. Borrowing Churchill "crowd sourced is the worse system except for all the others"
- wink 4y agoAll I can think of now is someone in NZ posting "TGIF" and then someone fact checks it and notices that it is, indeed, not Friday in California.