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> Turn on by default the tools to amplify factual voices over disinformation Who gets to say what is factual? EDIT: This isn't a gotcha, I am genuinely curiou

• Jochim 4y ago
  The people who already have absolute control over what you do and don't see in your feed. The algorithms of these platforms have been extremely effective at enabling the dissemination of lies and misinformation. When you consider that they're also designed to essentially reinforce any particular view you might have then it becomes clear why we've seen such extreme polarisation. I have absolutely zero problems with those algorithms being altered to break people out of those filter bubbles and/or limit the reach of people with a history of making wildly unsubstantiated claims.
  • FeepingCreature 4y ago
    "out of filter bubbles" == "into other filter bubbles". This isn't empowerment, it's hijacking. Even in 2022, the world wide web is still a hell of a lot more diverse than one single organization. Especially Mozilla. Should you trust any one website? No. But which websites you frequent is your choice, and it's one of the few dimensions of freedom remaining to the internet. The only job of the browser is to facilitate this freedom, and any divergence from that goal will only diminish what free choice remains.
    • Jochim 4y ago
      > "out of filter bubbles" == "into other filter bubbles". This isn't empowerment, it's hijacking. It's hardly hijacking when they placed you in those bubbles in the first place. I'm quite happy to break algorithmic filter bubbles given the rise in both extremism and lunatic conspiracy theories we've seen in recent years. > Should you trust any one website? No. But which websites you frequent is your choice, and it's one of the few dimensions of freedom remaining to the internet. The only job of the browser is to facilitate this freedom, and any divergence from that goal will only diminish what free choice remains. It's a fantastic thing that Mozilla isn't suggesting that any of these changes be made to your browser then isn't it.
      • FeepingCreature 4y ago
        > It's a fantastic thing that Mozilla isn't suggesting that any of these changes be made to your browser then isn't it. When a browser vendor advocates for "amplifying factual voices", in my mind's eye I see a browser tab filled entirely with a well-styled notification: "This site may contain misleading or harmful information. It has been blocked for your safety." But I'm sure there'll be an about:config setting to bypass it and it only gets reset every two or three updates. Mozilla should stay in their lane. -No, that's not accurate. Mozilla should get back in their lane. Maybe then they can finally find the time to finish implementing all the APIs that they removed without replacement with the Quantum rewrite.
        • Jochim 4y ago
          > When a browser vendor advocates for "amplifying factual voices", in my mind's eye I see a browser tab filled entirely with a well-styled notification: "This site may contain misleading or harmful information. It has been blocked for your safety." The browser vendor is explicitly suggesting that platforms like Facebook "amplify factual voices.". That quote is literally a link discussing Facebook's work in that area. There's no suggestion whatsoever in the article that they're planning having the browser do this What you're picturing in your minds eye could be concerning if it was at all close to the point of the article or being suggested as a solution. There's been no indication that there is even a plan to do so.
          • FeepingCreature 4y ago
            Hey, maybe I'm worrying over nothing.
      • ndriscoll 4y ago
        > It's hardly hijacking when they placed you in those bubbles in the first place. Don't people create their own feeds? I hardly ever go on these sites, but I just checked my Facebook, and it's still people I knew in high school/college posting pictures of their travels, kids, etc. plus some lawn/garden groups my wife subscribed to. Don't you have to follow people on e.g. Twitter for them to appear in your feed?
    • shadowgovt 4y ago
      It's interesting to me that people seem generally comfortable with the mechanisms browsers use to determine if a site is unsafe in the sense that it has a track record of carrying malware ("Google has detected harmful content") but get really upset about the possibility that a similar system could be used to protect users from having their minds hacked by info-charlatans. I guess people know what malware looks like but the jury's still out on whether someone who's been radicalized into believing a demonstrable untruth about the world around them has even been attacked? Like we see as different, for some reason, grandma crying because a hacker stole her passwords and drained her bank account vs. grandma crying because she's in jail for having broken into a pizzeria because someone online convinced her vampires were using the pizzeria's basement to drain adrenochrome out of children for an immortality serum? (My opinion has swung on this topic as I've gotten older and become responsible for elderly people's welfare in my life. The tools used to attack their ability to tell truth from falsehood online are refined, pervasive, effective, and insidious. I have to keep purging news aggregators from their smartphones because they click on an ad that brings them an ad that brings them an ad that brings them an ad, and the next thing I know their phone is locked up because three apps are bumping twenty notifications an hour about what the 'woke agenda' will do to the bathrooms in their homes).
      • account42 4y ago
        > It's interesting to me that people seem generally comfortable with the mechanisms browsers use to determine if a site is unsafe in the sense that it has a track record of carrying malware ("Google has detected harmful content") I am definitely not comfortable with that considering that I know it contains false postives that google does not care to do anything about. Most people don't even know about google safe browsing or how realize how much control it gives Google. BTW, VirusTotal is also run by Google which they are not very open about. > I guess people know what malware looks like I have yet to find anyone that does. Certainly not the anti-virus industry.
      • throw10920 4y ago
        > It's interesting to me that people seem generally comfortable with the mechanisms browsers use to determine if a site is unsafe in the sense that it has a track record of carrying malware ("Google has detected harmful content") but get really upset about the possibility that a similar system could be used to protect users from having their minds hacked by info-charlatans. It's so much easier to tell whether a website is distributing malware than it is to tell when an "info-chartalan" is "hijacking someone's mind" that those things are in entirely different difficulty classes. It's completely impossible to even get a small group of people in the same political party to agree on a definition for "misinformation", let alone a large group, let alone a group spanning multiple political parties, let alone be able to consistently tag content in the same way, let alone do that at scale. We already have people who disagree about the nature of reality, or claim that truth and morals are subjective. You might as well try comparing adding 3-digit numbers together with being a judge in a court of law. One of those things is mostly mechanical, although nontrivial to do at scale - the other is extremely messy and involves a massive amount of human factor. It's entirely reasonable to have significantly different views about them (and standards for who you let perform them).
  • denton-scratch 4y ago
    The question you were answering: > how we would establish a source of truth Your reply: > limit the reach of people with a history of making wildly unsubstantiated claims. That's circular; to determine whether a claim is unsubstantiated, you need a source of truth.
    • Jochim 4y ago
      When I replied the question was: > Who gets to say what is factual? To which my response was: "The people who already have absolute control over what you do and don't see in your feed." The question was not "how we would establish a source of truth".
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  We need a better general understanding of what good sources of truth look like, for one. We seem to collectively have this notion that some youtube rando can do enough research in two hours to destroy the credibility of someone who has been researching something for years. That is insane. We need to start holding every participant in a debate to the same standard. And randos on the Internet start at the bottom of the scale.
  • dan_mctree 4y ago
    What do you think such an understanding would look like? A youtube rando may well have been researching something for a decade too yet be completely wrong (see: many conspiracy theorists), research time is often not particularly relevant. Stepping to authority over youtube randos on the other hand seems like a flawed idea too, 'authority' is often a biased group of the old guard. And in the most controversial topics, you'll have widely varying opinions on who the authorities are. Evidence then? Evidence can be cool, but is often really easy to spin whichever way the talking head wants. And that is if isn't outright doctored. The scientific process, including peer review? Maybe, but this doesn't work particularly well on some of the most important things we want to discover truth in such as politics an recent events Even in some kind of ideal world, where we can theoretically try to find the most truthful answer, we'd struggle hard. Let alone in our chaotic society where what's loudest and most catchy is surely going to outcompete whatever is the most truthlike
• titzer 4y ago
  This is a reasonable question, but at the present moment people pretend that the manufactured doubts, e.g. about climate change, are tantamount to real doubts, when they aren't. We live in an atmosphere where doubt, disinformation, and confusion is an active strategy. It isn't even so much about claiming "alternative facts" as it is keeping people triggered. I would recommend watching "Hypernormalisation" by Adam Curtis to understand what is going on.
• yccs27 4y ago
  This question seems to get an outrage-filled HN thread every week or so, which is probably why people think it's a gotcha. Latest post I can remember is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202549
• thomastjeffery 4y ago
  It may not be your intention, but it is a gotcha, by virtue of the surrounding context. The implication is that any person would be too biased to be able to do the job, but the reality is more interesting than that. And, of course, you aren't getting an answer to your question, because a random HN commenter doesn't know exactly who. In fact, the article itself doesn't know either, because it's making a recommendation of what should be done, not a declaration of what they are doing. But when it comes down to it, the "who" isn't nearly as important as it sounds. Most of the human pitfalls we are concerned about when we ask "who" are adequately answered with "how". In the end, it's the implementation that really matters. Disinformation on public forums is not a new pattern. Traditional forums (including HN) manage it with moderation. In this case, we have an answer to "who": the moderators. And "how" gets clearly outlined in the rules of the forum. But social media - like Facebook and Twitter - doesn't have moderators. Recently, there has been effort to do moderation with algorithms, but that tends to fail in a lot of edge cases. There have also been grass-roots efforts to fight disinformation, but in this case we can clearly see the "how" failing to protect us from the "who". There will always be groups that use the same patterns to promote disinformation, because the goals of a grass-roots information campaign don't react to criticism.
• betwixthewires 4y ago
  I do, after reading the information and reasoning about it for myself. Other people deciding what information I have access to are trying to disempower me from doing that whether I like it or not, and something stinks about such an approach and I'd like nothing to do with it.
  • Jochim 4y ago
    Other people are already deciding what information you have access to each time you visit one of these sites. While they might allow you to alter the probability of certain types of content showing up, the platform is already the arbiter of what content appears in your feed and is recommended to you. An example of this would be engagement. Platforms have generally made the decision that they'll promote content other people have seen and interacted with. You typically won't be shown content that has low engagement unless you've gone out of your way to find it. This already has huge effects on the type of content that reaches or is created by people. I understand that point in particular might be disagreeable to you but it'd be nice to know how do you feel about the other three. So much of the current discourse focuses around what isn't or can't be agreed rather than calling for action on points that are relatively settled.
    • betwixthewires 4y ago
      That's why I don't go to these sites.