4 ms·

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong? The people on the right seem

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong? The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.) Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can work, and the left doesn't?

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0] always applies. By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation. Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle
- elektrontamer 2y ago
  Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put pressure on social media companies to supress it.
  - macintux 2y ago
    > Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. If they’ve internalized/amplified it, they’ll believe the source, and disregard the contradictory information. This has been well-established over the last, oh, 10 years. Facts are irrelevant if you can choose your own sources.
    - the_optimist 2y ago
      This “sounds smart” and I’m sure it circulates well in conversation. In practice, no. The point of “facts” is to identify useful truths that guide decisions. When some portion of the distribution of people identify misalignment, which is inevitable—not optional—then they will true up.
      - macintux 2y ago
        4 years on and a significant proportion of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just how many years will it take for that to true up?
        tailrecursion 2y ago
        I notice you don't make a definite claim that it wasn't stolen. You're annoyed by the fact others believe it was, based on what you feel is insufficient evidence, yes? But if you can prove it wasn't, I'm interested
        ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
        Surely the burden of proof is on those making a claim of election interference? Elections are designed to be reliable and there haven't been reports of previous elections being "stolen", so I would think that reasonable evidence should be provided if people want to push the idea that an election was interfered with.
        the_optimist 2y ago
        There is no burden of proof required to assert a hypothesis. This is how none of truth nor science nor security operate. There is evidence gathering activity which supports or undermines, strengthening or weakening a hypothesis. Ideally, one dispositive form of evidence affirms or denies a hypothesis. It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud, but in any case, other claims are weak evidence.
  - 2c2c2c 2y ago
    80% of republicans believe 2020 was stolen.
    - jkubicek 2y ago
      don't worry, community notes on Twitter will fix this /s
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        Reddit's censorship surely will.
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    > Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0] Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets. Speech has consequences. > Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. ...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this. If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term. Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
    - tailrecursion 2y ago
      > Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
      - seadan83 2y ago
        Yes, but that correction doesn't reach everyone. Again thus, "speech has consequences"
    - elektrontamer 2y ago
      Sorry but I'm not willing to live in an insane orwellian world just so your grandma gets her vaccine. It's her family's responsiblity to convince her and if she still refuses shes an adult she has the right to refuse treatment and vaccines. As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences. What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
  - thomaslord 2y ago
    It's well established that adults who read incorrect information frequently don't find out it was wrong and become more skeptical of the source. Some people operate that way, but it's a small minority unfortunately. In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
- tailrecursion 2y ago
  Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general. How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"? I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    > How do you explain that there are smart people who [..] respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information" Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive. All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies. > I don't suppose you know of a solution Nope. :-( Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all. > The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening. Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced! In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
    - hughesjj 2y ago
      I'm looking back with how much teenage edgelord/ironic/sarcastic speech that was rampant in my youth covered for people who actually held horrible views like white nationalism. I thought it was all just shock humor. I know better now, but I'm worried about that persisting in kids. I think it's always been that way. I don't know how to mitigate it.
maxerickson 2y ago
The problem isn't "beliefs that are wrong", the problem is that it's Calvinball. Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof. Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal. Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident. Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it. And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.
- tailrecursion 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - anon373839 2y ago
    > believing 2020 was stolen (which is one I'm willing to believe) Interesting. What forms the basis of your belief? Personally, I think it’s interesting that over 60 lawsuits were filed across the U.S. to challenge the 2020 result, and not a single one produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud. Even judges appointed by Trump himself agreed that there was no evidence to support the claims. What do you think the simplest explanation for this is?
    - User23 2y ago
      Well at this point there are two plausible possibilities. 1) The circumstances around covid and last minute election rules changes made it possible to cheat in ways that slide beneath the high evidentiary standards of the courts. Or 2) Joe Biden was by far the most popular presidential candidate in history; easily getting many millions more votes than Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris. Given that we are reliably informed that significant electoral fraud is impossible, we can only conclude the Democrats made a catastrophic own goal by forcing the greatest candidate ever out of the race.
      - skissane 2y ago
        A third possibility you aren't considering: a lot of Democrats were bored and stuck at home and had nothing better to do, so they voted for Biden in 2020. Come 2024, they had plenty of other things to do than vote, so many of those who had in 2020 decided not to bother.
threeseed 2y ago
Community notes isn’t scalable. So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished. Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.
- tailrecursion 2y ago
  I agree with the first part totally, and you're probably right I invented something there. I only meant that free speech / "more information helps" seems to resonate with the right, and censorship seems to resonate with the left. Not so?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Censorship of books seem to resonate well with the right.
    - exodust 2y ago
      And rewriting books resonates with the left. Is this a game of left/right tennis I've walked into?
      - hughesjj 2y ago
        Depends what you mean in regards to rewriting. If there's a position that runs counter to our current scientific consensus, I think it should be updated to reflect the current consensus, but when I was reading my history/physics books they would cover what people believed at a particular time period. I don't see any issue with that. We're always learning more about the world around us. We are not an omniscient species. Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.
        exodust 2y ago
        Sounds like you haven't heard of the re-writing of books in the interest of over-enthusiastic DEI. There's non-fiction and fiction examples. Salman Rushdie described it as "absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed" [1]. Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work. [1] https://x.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113 https://x.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0] always applies. By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation. Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle

elektrontamer 2y ago
Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put pressure on social media companies to supress it.
- macintux 2y ago
  > Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. If they’ve internalized/amplified it, they’ll believe the source, and disregard the contradictory information. This has been well-established over the last, oh, 10 years. Facts are irrelevant if you can choose your own sources.
  - the_optimist 2y ago
    This “sounds smart” and I’m sure it circulates well in conversation. In practice, no. The point of “facts” is to identify useful truths that guide decisions. When some portion of the distribution of people identify misalignment, which is inevitable—not optional—then they will true up.
    - macintux 2y ago
      4 years on and a significant proportion of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just how many years will it take for that to true up?
      - tailrecursion 2y ago
        I notice you don't make a definite claim that it wasn't stolen. You're annoyed by the fact others believe it was, based on what you feel is insufficient evidence, yes? But if you can prove it wasn't, I'm interested
        ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
        Surely the burden of proof is on those making a claim of election interference? Elections are designed to be reliable and there haven't been reports of previous elections being "stolen", so I would think that reasonable evidence should be provided if people want to push the idea that an election was interfered with.
        the_optimist 2y ago
        There is no burden of proof required to assert a hypothesis. This is how none of truth nor science nor security operate. There is evidence gathering activity which supports or undermines, strengthening or weakening a hypothesis. Ideally, one dispositive form of evidence affirms or denies a hypothesis. It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud, but in any case, other claims are weak evidence.
- 2c2c2c 2y ago
  80% of republicans believe 2020 was stolen.
  - jkubicek 2y ago
    don't worry, community notes on Twitter will fix this /s
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Reddit's censorship surely will.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  > Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0] Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets. Speech has consequences. > Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. ...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this. If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term. Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
  - tailrecursion 2y ago
    > Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
    - seadan83 2y ago
      Yes, but that correction doesn't reach everyone. Again thus, "speech has consequences"
  - elektrontamer 2y ago
    Sorry but I'm not willing to live in an insane orwellian world just so your grandma gets her vaccine. It's her family's responsiblity to convince her and if she still refuses shes an adult she has the right to refuse treatment and vaccines. As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences. What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
- thomaslord 2y ago
  It's well established that adults who read incorrect information frequently don't find out it was wrong and become more skeptical of the source. Some people operate that way, but it's a small minority unfortunately. In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
tailrecursion 2y ago
Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general. How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"? I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  > How do you explain that there are smart people who [..] respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information" Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive. All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies. > I don't suppose you know of a solution Nope. :-( Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all. > The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening. Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced! In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    I'm looking back with how much teenage edgelord/ironic/sarcastic speech that was rampant in my youth covered for people who actually held horrible views like white nationalism. I thought it was all just shock humor. I know better now, but I'm worried about that persisting in kids. I think it's always been that way. I don't know how to mitigate it.

maxerickson 2y ago

The problem isn't "beliefs that are wrong", the problem is that it's Calvinball. Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof. Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal. Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident. Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it. And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.

tailrecursion 2y ago
[flagged]
- anon373839 2y ago
  > believing 2020 was stolen (which is one I'm willing to believe) Interesting. What forms the basis of your belief? Personally, I think it’s interesting that over 60 lawsuits were filed across the U.S. to challenge the 2020 result, and not a single one produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud. Even judges appointed by Trump himself agreed that there was no evidence to support the claims. What do you think the simplest explanation for this is?
  - User23 2y ago
    Well at this point there are two plausible possibilities. 1) The circumstances around covid and last minute election rules changes made it possible to cheat in ways that slide beneath the high evidentiary standards of the courts. Or 2) Joe Biden was by far the most popular presidential candidate in history; easily getting many millions more votes than Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris. Given that we are reliably informed that significant electoral fraud is impossible, we can only conclude the Democrats made a catastrophic own goal by forcing the greatest candidate ever out of the race.
    - skissane 2y ago
      A third possibility you aren't considering: a lot of Democrats were bored and stuck at home and had nothing better to do, so they voted for Biden in 2020. Come 2024, they had plenty of other things to do than vote, so many of those who had in 2020 decided not to bother.

threeseed 2y ago

Community notes isn’t scalable. So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished. Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.

tailrecursion 2y ago
I agree with the first part totally, and you're probably right I invented something there. I only meant that free speech / "more information helps" seems to resonate with the right, and censorship seems to resonate with the left. Not so?
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Censorship of books seem to resonate well with the right.
  - exodust 2y ago
    And rewriting books resonates with the left. Is this a game of left/right tennis I've walked into?
    - hughesjj 2y ago
      Depends what you mean in regards to rewriting. If there's a position that runs counter to our current scientific consensus, I think it should be updated to reflect the current consensus, but when I was reading my history/physics books they would cover what people believed at a particular time period. I don't see any issue with that. We're always learning more about the world around us. We are not an omniscient species. Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.
      - exodust 2y ago
        Sounds like you haven't heard of the re-writing of books in the interest of over-enthusiastic DEI. There's non-fiction and fiction examples. Salman Rushdie described it as "absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed" [1]. Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work. [1] https://x.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113 https://x.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113