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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

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).

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).