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How do you propose western countries and social media companies fight disinformation?
by beefield 4y ago
How do you propose western countries and social media companies fight disinformation?
- ars 4y agoI propose they don't. That's not their job. Block only speech is actually illegal by the laws of the country. It's not their job to decide what is true and false.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoThe solution to bad speech is more speech. Not less.
- Uehreka 4y agoI see your “The solution to bad speech is more speech” and raise you a “A lie can spread around the world before the truth can get its pants on”. Call or fold?
- geysersam 4y agoCall. It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays in the end. Despite us humans being a lying, cheating bunch, knowledge and access to education continues to grow all over the world. That's certainly not thanks to censorship!
- anigbrowl 4y agoNot so fast, pardner. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. You are making two mistakes here: the simplest one is thinking that the winner of the argument is whoever has the last word. This is very frequently not the case, as any troll could tell you. Often, the power move is to get opponents mad and then move on, leaving them impotently fuming about how terrible that person is. You're also identifying with the larger group at the societal/species level, which is valid, but is also a way of ignoring problems in the here and now. It's like zooming out from a bloody battlefield to look at the earth in space. With an extraplanetary perspective, Earth looks so beautiful and peaceful...but that doesn't help a single person who is impacted by the bloody battle.
- throwaway53523 4y ago>It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays in the end. This is contradictory. Not every reader is going to "stay in the end" to learn what's really true. The past few years have given plenty of evidence for that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mylidlpony 4y ago> It's not about who's fastest, it's about who stays in the end And that's where authoritarian regimes get you. People usually aren't that invested in a conversation, or in disproving firehose of falsehoods style comments placed by people incentivized monetarily to make sure the correct opinion stays in the end. If the platform has rating system they also generate accounts to manipulate it for the same purpose.
- nradov 4y agoCall. How do you define a lie? Please be precise. What source of truth is used to evaluate possible lies, and who gets to make the final determination? What level of confidence is required? Does intent matter? Does a statement count as a lie if it is factually correct, or at least not provably incorrect, but still potentially misleading or lacking relevant context?
- tstrimple 4y agoAh yes. The "alternate facts" angle. No one can know anything. Donald Trump won the 2020 election is just as true as Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
- account42 4y agoDo you also unquestonably accept Putin's, Xi's, Kim's and Erdogan's elections results? What reason do you have to believe that the situations there are different other than what you have been told? I have no reason to believe that Trump won in 2020 but elections are something that inherently requires trust in the institutions running them which makes the result something very much different from an unquestionable fact if that trust is broken.
- smcn 4y agoThat would only be the solution if the problem was bad speech. The problem is that algorithms optimise for engagement and therefore amplify increasingly extremist views. You cannot talk your way out of that position, it surely must include intervention?
- sampo 4y agoMaybe you also cannot algorithm out of the position that algorithms took you in.
- saurik 4y agoIt sounds like the problem implicit in your framing then is "algorithms", not extremists--a stance I agree with--which would imply the disinformation isn't coming from big tech's users, it is caused by big tech itself, and maybe it is the algorithms that should be limited and regulated instead of the discussions.
- anigbrowl 4y agoI doubt this, because it was possible to 'go viral' to a limited degree way back in the days of Usenet, with any algorithmic selection or amplification going on at all. preferential attachment is a social phenomenon which businesses leverage for profit (not just int he era of social media, but since the establishment of brands and before that, the awareness by politicians and theatrical promoters of how compelling parasocial relationships can be). Algorithmic manipulation is a problem, but you could switch it all off in the morning and you would still have the same issues. Any system can and will be gamed.
- slg 4y agoThese algorithms are a multiplier to the problem, but they aren't the root cause. You can find plenty of misinformation on cable news and you can't blame that exclusively on algorithms.
- smcn 4y agoNot the root cause, no. I'd say the root cause is reliance on advertising for income because that means that you now need to draw as many viewers/users as possible, and that's why they start to create content which maximizes reactions or engagement.
- beefield 4y agoChatGPT integrations to online forums: Hold my beer.
- PurpleRamen 4y agoGive it 3 days, and it will populate the myth that purple elephants are responsible for 9/11, because their pink mousy overlords demanded more moon-rock cheese with lizard-flavor.
- LarryMullins 4y agoPeople do a good enough job of making up their own nonsense about 9/11 being perpetrated by the usual suspects using space lasers, holograms, mininukes, etc. We don't, and shouldn't, censor any of that.
- swasheck 4y agothe low s/n then makes it about who can be loudest and/or most provocative. i don’t disagree that disinformation shouldn’t just be squelched, but it’s not as simple as “education” or “more speech” and as humans we tend to prefer the path of lead resistance.
- PurpleRamen 4y agoDDOSing humans rarely benefits the truth. In case of cognitive overload, humans tend to favor the simple answers, not the correct one.
- geysersam 4y agoI really don't think that's the case. What makes you think so? In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical thinking.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago> What makes you think so? Experience. We've also basically seen in it in the pandemia all over the world happening in the last years. Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for everyone. > In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical thinking. Simple exposure is only helpful if the people are able to handle it, and willing to invest the time, and the one delivering it has no bad intention. The ones where it will not work, are left as the victims of this strategy. Maybe they will find their way after a long painful process. But then the harm is done.
- account42 4y ago> We've also basically seen in it in the pandemia all over the world happening in the last years. Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for everyone. You mean the pandemic where alternative viewpoints were systematically suppressed in the western world?
- anigbrowl 4y agoEveryone has a plan until they get punched in the face. A lot of social media dynamics are not reasoned arguments, they are the product emotional outbursts which can be manufactured and herded. The world is not made up of Spock-like rationalists, and although most people are capable of rationality, many social settings are not conducive to it. Look at stampede disasters: every year people die because panic breaks out among a crowd in a constricted space and people start to operate on instinct instead of thought.
- kibwen 4y agoThis is a bit like saying "the darkness is bad, so the solution is light, and if the light ever becomes blinding, the solution is more light". Speech is not the point, it's just a medium for useful information. More speech is only good to the extent that it proliferates useful information. If useless spam speech is used to overwhelm useful speech, then that undermines the whole point of the principle of free speech. And with the advent of modern technology, overwhelming the useful speech is easier than ever. Our historic ideas of free speech are wholly unprepared to deal with the overflow attacks that are possible in the modern age. Is it not "censorship" to shout over someone so loudly that they can't be heard?
- egeozcan 4y agoPeople learn to wear sunglasses. Just stop trying to give them "the right amount of the right kind of light".
- dvt 4y ago> This is a bit like saying "the darkness is bad, so the solution is light, and if the light ever becomes blinding, the solution is more light" Completely untenable analogy. Why people say is that the solution is more speech is due to the antecedent concept of the marketplace of ideas and that, by and large, ideas are sifted via free speech and the good ones last while the bad ones die. You cannot have this sorting process in a system that stifles free speech. If you want to attack free speech absolutism, at least attack Mill's axioms, not some made-up poorly-formed straw man of an analogy.
- kristiandupont 4y ago>while the bad ones die. I am really not seeing this.
- kibwen 4y agoA.k.a. "the marketplace of ideas can remain irrational longer than free society can remain solvent".
- 4y ago
- anigbrowl 4y agoCliches aren't an argument, but they're good for clicks. You can do better. The solution is not as simple as 'more speech' because we are dealing with a historically unprecedented volume of amplified and recorded speech at scale, so things like signal:noise ratio become very important. Simplistic responses like yours suggest an unwillingness or inability to engage with the complexity of the issue. A simple example of why you're wrong is that it's easy for an actor with access to an echo chamber to launch a viral cascade by modeling outrage over some made-up or minor issue to boost engagement. Fans of the actor share it out of agreement, amusement, or for the pleasure of owning their opponents, while opponents of the actor either deride or argue. The actor gets to appear in the day's trends, gain new followers/subscribers, boosting influence and financial intake. But there's also a more subtle transfer of wealth, not so obviously measurable by the metrics of the social media platform. The actor spends 1-5 minutes composing their message, like you spend only a short period to select and repost your cliched response. The time that other people spend replying takes at least as long and often longer. So while the actor may have invested 5 minutes out of their 24 hour day in amplifying their own profile, by saying something deliberately controversial, they've caused others to put in significantly more time to responding. Here, that's not such a big deal because HN discussions are not that complex and people have time to read and consider every comment in a thread they're interested in - so your claim has some validity. But on large social media platforms, the scope is radically different. A provocative tweet can generate thousands of negative replies, so that an investment of 5 minutes by the provocative actor can cause people to collectively put hundreds of hours into their responses, which unconscious social labor serves to amplify the provocateur. There are lots of influencers who have this down to a system and do it on an almost daily basis. It's essentially a theft of time - a little from their fans, a lot from their anti-fans, with that time being converted into engagement and increased reach. This is why your reflex response is wrong. Bad speech can be designed to yield more speech that amplifies the original bad message for fun and profit. Your concept of reasoned debate only functions in forums where there are some leveling factors like equal time allocations or legal procedures for the allocation of time. Here on HN and on many small forums, that function is done by moderators (who can ban intentionally disruptive users or manage anti-spam filters) and to some extent by users (whose expressed preferences have direct weight like downvotes or flags, and indirect weight by their long-term community participation making them familiar to each other). On big platforms, the calculus is completely different and your model of reasoned debate breaks down.
- alphanullmeric 4y agoForce is only justified in response to force.
- anigbrowl 4y agoSo true! Now please step into the boxcar. If you resist, you're the one at fault.
- EricE 4y agoWhy is it up to companies and "western countries" to fight disinformation? Especially when it often turns out they are the biggest propagators of it?
- beefield 4y agoBecause their customers/voters want it? Me, I very much prefer censored HN to free speech 4chan. The question is, what are you doing here if you prefer 4chan where the "truth" is not censored?
- quanticle 4y agoAs someone who visits both HN and 4Chan, I like having the choice. I definitely don't want the government deciding that 4Chan is illegal and wiping it off the 'Net because it contains disinformation. When you ask, "How should governments fight disinformation," what you're really asking is, "How can governments deny their citizens the right to choose what information they read, watch or listen to." When it's phrased like that, it's not so appealing, is it?
- beefield 4y agoNo, it is the other way round. If there are no places where companies and/or governments censor/limit free speech/fight misinformation, every place turns into 4chan and you lose your ability to choose. I'm happy there are places where speech is not restricted. And I'm even more happy that there are places where speech is restricted. Do you think HN should stop moderating discussion?
- FpUser 4y agoDefinitely not by telling we are the good guys hence hold the monopoly on truth.
- wtetzner 4y agoThere isn’t a way to fight disinformation other than helping people get better at critical thinking. Using censorship to fight disinformation just means we’ve picked some group of people that get to decide what the “truth” is.
- JTbane 4y agoShould they? One political party's disinfo is another's creed.
- quanticle 4y agoThe same way they ought to fight drugs. Don't.
- m0llusk 4y agoDmytro Zolotukhemin at the Institute of Information Security in Ukraine has an interesting take on this which he talks about in detail on an interview with Silicon Curtain on YouTube. He asserts that the idea of disinformation is so slippery and hard to work with that it is not worth it. What we really have is stories that people share. His idea is that the right way to regulate this is to provide people with tools for assessing information themselves. Basic critical thinking and internet searches can go a long way to revealing both truth and ambiguity. This is a specific variation of the idea that the answer to bad information exchange is more and better information exchange.
- greatgib 4y agoThe solution is obvious, it is called education and critical thinking. But the same kind of gov are also very afraid of a too educated population that could challenge their authority!