If they do look for fake accounts and misinformation, its not enough to remove the misinformation they have to inform people they have been misinformed.

The response somebody actually has: “Twitter is part of the pedophile ring and also they’re watching me.”

Actually there's no reasoning with most people; most people can't be convinced that e.g. the earth is flat even when presented with loads of evidence. Speaking for myself, I don't feel like I've changed my opinion on a lot of things for a long time.

Part of the problem with the shitty discourse today is that empathy for the ‘they’ everyone talks about is an act of treason. It’s very difficult to bulls trust without that.

/s You forgot a "not". :)

That sort of claim demands some sort of evidence, multiple idealy given the extraordinary claim.

If your only source for a rightwing perspective is the streetcorner lunatic, then you might just listen in.

EDIT: I should add how this relates to your post. There needs to be rightwing-slant fact checkers that can call out the worst bullshit. People will only trust criticism perceived as coming from their own camp.

> How did wearing a mask become a polarizing issue? If you’re paying close attention, the arguments against masks might sound familiar: denying the science, cherry-picking data, cries of infringing on personal freedoms. It’s a page out of the Republican establishment’s playbook for weaponizing climate change denial. Back in 2018, Chris spoke with Vox writer David Roberts about the crisis of information cultivated by the current conservative movement and it's a conversation that seems, if possible, more relevant than ever.

https://overcast.fm/+Vm1isKU1Y

Do you feel that the people wearing blue coats also have the same set of issues?

And to anyone downvoting him, got a source for the counterpoint? I've been looking for a right leaning intellectual voice for years. I haven't been able to find any that don't use obviously fallicious arguments or ignore important contexts of reality.

This.

We can't save the people who have already gone down the rabbit hole but we can prevent more jumping in after them.

I don't really see the downside to correcting false information. If someone's too deep down the rabbit hole fine, but there are people who are not.

While I have often repeated George Carlin's observation[0] that: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

And felt superior, the truth (as it is with most things) is much more nuanced and complex.

Firstly, what we term our (singular) "mind" is really the synthesis of multiple, sometimes competing[1] neural systems.

In part, our "view" of the world around us isn't the real-time "I sense it and it's so" process we experience. Rather, our brains' multiple systems take in and interpret stimuli (including memories and physical responses sparked by those stimuli) and arrive at a "story" our brain tells us, that we see as "reality."

In most cases, the story is close enough to the actual events/stimuli around us, that we do just fine.

In many surroundings/situations we often make decisions/judgements which don't engage the higher-level reasoning portions of our brains, but instead rely on systems driven by emotion and responses selected for over millions of years of evolution.

An interesting and accessible discussion of this can be found in the recent PBS series Hacking Your Mind[2].

The upshot is that while we aren't necessarily dumb, our neural systems are susceptible to being misled when specific responses (fear is an excellent example) are induced by stimuli (in this case, social media posts) that push us to rely on the emotional/quick response systems in our brains more so than the slower, more reasoned/balanced systems.

And that isn't a dumb vs. smart thing. It's taking advantage of responses/processes that have evolved in us and our ancestors over millions of years. Those processes were (and sometimes still are) critical in quickly assessing whether or not a specific situation or individual poses a threat, an opportunity or can safely be ignored.

So, no. We aren't stupid, we're just wired to respond in certain ways that marketers and propagandists use to their own advantage.

Obviously, this is over simplified (hey, it's a comment on HN, not an academic paper), but I believe it elucidates the nuance/complexity of human interpretation and experience of "reality."

I'd welcome those who have actual expertise in this area to chime in with better/more specific information.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-t...

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/

All of this isn't incredibly well understood by scientists and philosophers, but there are all sorts of theories and studies that are chipping away at the mystery. Digging into the material while reflecting upon the nature and contents of one's own mind, a lot of interesting questions arise, like "just how is it that I seem to know the answer to so many things, and can often even articulate how I know things to be true, but then often discover I'm actually incorrect"? Or "I believe X, and I consciously attribute it to Y, but how would I know for certain that Y is the only thing upon which my belief rests"? It also makes reading social media a lot more interesting because you get to observe manifestations of the illusions up close.

Based on my layman knowledge of the underlying neurology & psychology, combined with the epistemic crisis (systemic racism/corruption, conspiracy theories, fake news, etc) that can be observed on a daily basis on any social media platform (and interfering with democracy), I have come to strongly "believe" that society should be having some serious conversations about whether this material should be included in some way with standard school curriculum, perhaps as a sibling to the anti-racism/stereotyping initiatives that seem to be showing some decent results.

Just a few of the many interesting theories about what's going on in our brains:

Heuristics in judgment and decision-making: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_dec...

How the Brain Biases Beliefs: https://neurosciencenews.com/biases-beliefs-9701/

Belief formation – A driving force for brain evolution: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027826261...

State-dependent Memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory

Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

The Noumenal World and the Phenomenal World: http://mrhoyestokwebsite.com/WOKs/Reason/Useful%20Informatio...

Four theories of amodal perception: https://escholarship.org/content/qt3td65034/qt3td65034_noSpl...

The Importance of Amodal Completion in Everyday Perception: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6083800/

What Is Amodal Completion?

"Amodal completion is the representation of those parts of the perceived object that we get no sensory stimulation from. In the case of vision, it is the representation of occluded parts of objects we see: When we see a cat behind a picket fence, our perceptual system represents those parts of the cat that are occluded by the picket fence."

"If perception is sensitive to top-down influences because of the top-down sensitivity of amodal completion, then it is not an unbiased way of learning about the world, as our preexisting thoughts, beliefs and expectations could influence how and what we perceive (see Siegel, 2011 on a version of this worry). So we get a form of vicious circularity: Our beliefs, thoughts and expectations are supposed to be based on and justified by our perceptual states, but these perceptual states themselves are influenced by our beliefs, thoughts and expectations (because of the top-down influences on perception via amodal completion)."

Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? Would that make people more or less likely to use the library?

"Non-fiction has numbers", we were told.

I'm not sure Dewey attempts to separate fact from fiction -- just to categorize the author's intent (or assertion).

In addition to the Christian Bible, the "non-fiction" section also contains religious texts that refute it. And New Age crystal vibration harmonic ecstasy stuff. And Dianetics.

The wide disagreement on "fiction" vs "non-fiction" is probably not a solvable problem. See also: a world map, at any time in recorded history.

That's not to say the line isn't murky, but that's true of any human classification system.

Speak for yourself. Several atheists including myself read some of the Bible for our book club. In particular the wisdom literature has value as a fiction removed from the religious context. Beyond that, the Bible is the earliest work we have which exhibits several tropes, and western art has been heavily influenced by it.

Fictional works are organized alphabetically by the author's last name

It's pretty clear that the anthology/compendium often termed "The Bible" is mostly myth and retellings of oral histories that date back many millenia, with some of those incorporating historical events (think docudrama[0]).

As such, I'd posit that in a vacuum, such works should be placed in the "Historical Fiction" section.

However, since there are quite a few of these works (the Hindu Vedas, the Tripitaka, the Quran, etc.), it seems that the current classification (Religion) is reasonable.

That said, not specifically calling it "fiction" doesn't make it non-fiction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docudrama

If what I checked out was fake? Yeah, personally I would like to be told.

1: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/50-oh-howard-you-idio...

In real libraries, they only stocked published books, and publishers decided what to publish. So the publishers acted as gatekeepers and fact-checkers (sometimes not so well, as the Howard Hughes example shows), and the library could accept their classification.

Now, anyone can write a book and add it to our hypothetical library. If the librarians aren't going to classify the books, then who does? Because someone has got to...

No I wouldn't want anyone chastising me, nor any contact with a human (that can be awkward). But I'd be happy to get an email saying "Please be aware that the book X from the science section that you borrowed earlier has been found to contain inaccurate information and has been moved to our controversial science/science fiction section".

Retractoins occur all the time in newspapera but they build on the model that people actually read the newspaper. It doesn't work when people read one article from a social media link. Fact checking and retractions should be updated to work in the age of facebook 1) Respectable media would publish retractions to facebook, saying "Please notify anyone who followed the link to reuters.com/article/123 that the article has been corrected". 2) Fact checks would do the same thing (because this is most important with less respectable media).

For this to happen obviously facebook would want to agree to annoy a fraction of their users who don't want to find their favorite links unavailable, littered with warnigs, or followed by messages that they are eating an unhealthy news diet. Hopefully they realize that this is a goal worth pursuing.

We really don't have the best relationship with admitting change in our beliefs. Or with keeping records.

because one has to actively seek out information in a library. Are you aware of any libraries that send out propaganda pamphlets to tens of millions of people? Because that actually has caused the downfall of societies

With cars that turn out to be defective, in Germany the authorities can issue mandatory recalls and notices to owners of cars of the recalled model.

If I borrowed a book at a library or read a scientific study that has been later proven to be wrong or outright misleading, yes I would like to be notified of that.

Don't expect anything significant.

Cigarettes have images selected to be revolting or upsetting to keep people away.

That is not the reason people stop smoking cigs, or the reason cig consumption is down.

Social reasons, huge taxes and a concerted effort to make this unviable for a majority of people, in combination has made the dent it has.

And yet, people smoke today.

Something I've always wondered about stories of accounts being portrayed as "from" a certain country, my impression has always been that things like location and ip address data can be spoofed to make it appear that you are in a location other than where you actually are.

Does anyone happen to have technical depth in this area? Is it known with high certainty that it is impossible to spoof this information and then make posts from a social media account (Yes/No/Maybe)? (And, how is it known?)

If it has enough detail to be tested, you can more justifiably mark it as fake. The vague unfalsifiable stuff is much less satisfying for people to spread.

Their metrics are active monthly users and ad revenue. The more buzz is going on, the better for them.

They will sometimes have to delete the most obvious fake accounts, yeah, but besides that they couldn't be more happy when fans of the People’s Front of Judea have virtual battles with the fans of Judeas Front of People (i know the joke, but I don't know it in English, just German, hope this translation is correct).

All of that generates just more buzz, drives people to the platform, generates clicks, pageviews, ad revenue.

Social Networks will always only do the bare minimum to fulfill (the rather low) requirements of the law and let the rest flow...

You were almost spot on. I believe it's the Judean People's Front. The People's Front of Judea is correct.

Spare a coin for an old ex-leper?

Because the number of monthly active users/the number of pageviews gets higher. That's a talking point when doing ad sales. It's about potential reach of advertisements, which also defines the price of your campaigns.

> Why do you think people in the midst of these will engage with the ads?

They probably won't. You'll see lots of reach but no conversions. That's the point where ad-agencies or the social networks itself jump in and "help you" "optimize" your ads for conversions. Maybe some of it will even stick in the end, who knows. Anyway, some people along the chain made money.

> What advertisers do you think want to have their ads and brands associated with these engagements?

Do advertisers really know? I think in most cases your targeting is kept fuzzy enough so you're not able to pinpoint it down to a post level or whatnot, at least you will reach your "target audience". (That also sounds great when your marketing presents the numbers: "Big hit in the target audience, but no conversions yet! We'll have to fine tune our ads even more...") Whether they are sharing cat pictures or are discussing genocide... You'll never really know in the end.

Of course there was some uproar when companies found their advertisments as pre-roll ads on the YouTube videos of ISIS, but that's a storm in a water glass. Nothing to really worry about after all.

So: good for the world, bad for the platform. Not gonna be implemented by the platform owners...

Other platforms are of course more favourably disposed towards multiple accounts, automation assisted high volume posts, shifting identities and parody accounts

They do slightly, but only to the degree that their actual users get annoyed by all the bots. And people are surprisingly willing to put up with the bots, so.... yeah, I agree.

Edit: I need to point out that this should be optional. Anonymity should still be the default.

The other thing is - imagine I were a gay man living in Poland (a country that recently made europe-wide outrage headlines with "LGBT-free zones"), or in Russia where "advocating" for LGBT is a crime, or in Saudi-Arabia where you might end up literally decapitated. I could go and discuss topics regarding my sexuality on Twitter anonymously - but with a forced tie to a government ID?! I would have to fear authorities using my free speech to get me imprisoned or worse all the time!

Also, I never meant to suggest proof of ID would be mandatory to use the service! It would be an additional status you can get optionally, if you want to get extra credibility. If you desire anonymity instead, that should absolutely be your right.

At the moment, you can get a checkmark on your twitter but how you do it is a bit unclear. Technically you have to be somewhat noteworthy, but the bar seems to be really low. If this was an entirely user-initiated process, over time people would associate that status with higher credibility.

> I'm not aware of any significant persecution or hate towards gay people in Poland

Then you need to stop burying your head in the sand. Gay, queer and trans people are attacked all the time, and they have a very strong reason to be afraid. Public institutions are encouraging the aggression, because it serves the interests of those in power.

"Around 100 towns and regions across Poland, nearly a third of the country, have passed resolutions declaring themselves free of "LGBT ideology". These resolutions are essentially symbolic and unenforceable but they have provided fresh ammunition in Poland's increasingly bitter culture war."

True or false?

You can read the whole thing here:

https://v.fastcdn.co/u/ff8eca37/50262470-0-SKPR-commune-ENG....

"Programmes of partnerships with communi-ty organisations should respect the principle of strengthening the family and marriage and rule out the funding of any projects harmful to these values. It is especially crucial to exclude any chance of allocating public funds and public property for projects that undermine the con-stitutional identity of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman"

== explicit prohibition on use of public funds for any pro-non-straight marriage activism

"Parents should be allowed to verify any external organisations operating on the premises of the school and any materials they use during non--compulsory classes dually: both individually and collectively – through the parents’ board. It is a good practice to present information inc-luding not only the name but also the program-me and profile of the organisation to each parent separately, in a way allowing them to become familiar with the content thereof before enrolment. A similar mechanism should be applied to any other teaching and educational activities pursu-ed by schools or institutions that go beyond the curriculum or that involve issues covered by the cu-rriculum of Family Life Education, including those financed from public grants"

== any parent can veto any external material on ideological grounds

If you download that link, and read it, this is the very first section:

> [...] including the protection of marriage, being a union of a man and a woman, as well as the family, motherhood and parenthood, the right to protect family life [...]

Makes you wonder, would the platforms ever be truly transparent with their product?

Example: Soylent Green.

I, for one, don’t want Twitter, or anyone else, arbitrarily deciding what (or from whom) I’m allowed to read.

Twitter’s shadowbanning a lot of terms from search lately, especially those related to conspiracies or organized, armed groups (even groups without histories of violence).

It’s becoming really terrifying to not be able to get a clear or complete picture of the relative size/penetration of these memes, or to know what these groups are saying or being told (regardless of whether I buy into their ideologies or not).

Keeping tabs on what’s going on in one of the most volatile and potentially dangerous times ever is now being actively hindered by the social platforms, and it’s terrible.

We do not need more of that, and we desperately need less.

Better scoring, grouping, tagging, and classification tools would be GREAT. More censorship would not.

Why can't we peer review this stuff and let the "market" decide what is true. We know that this can work quite well and on average it should lead to better results than the social networks trying to do this themselves.

You can even gamify voting things as untrue - each person could have a page rank of things they have said are false and if they consistently downvote "the other side" for things that are true their voting ability will be proportionally reduced.

Your suggestion sounds like letting the ”crowd” decide; basically voting on the truth democratically. Religion is (kind of) an implementation, where people can “vote” for the denomination whose truth they prefer. They vote with their feet or with their guns, depending on surrounding historical context.

Letting the “market” decide would probably require some additional mechanisms, like financial reinforcement. Advertising is (kind of) an implementation: the more money you spend, the stronger your signal will be. Alas, it’s an incomplete implementation and pernicious ground truth often has an undue influence.

In a sense we already do. Right-leaning and left-leaning groups already believe mostly non-overlapping sets of “alternative facts”. Each side builds its own narrative not so much because of hate for the other side, but because in aggregate the total amount of misinformation has eroded the potential for credibility of any person or statement that doesn’t come from one’s own “in” group.

In today’s Internet you build your own picture of what’s true. Everything else is noise.

The ones that irritate are the Stolen Valor type, where people claim military service. The game tends to fall apart quickly, though.

The reason is that these experiences are binary. Think sysadmins: you've either done it, and can sustain a conversation about Linux or you haven't.

Fakery has a short half-life.

Hmm? I thought Titania McGrath was a parody account. How is it (And other accounts) a fraud?

But an infinite regress.

Fake accounts, especially for swaying public opinion are not that easy to spot.

I failed at spotting several, and I used to spend more time than average dealing with user content.

It's hard to look at an account and simply say "this isn't a person.", perhaps more so if you have a broad view on the range of possible human behavior.

Maliciously formed content works hard to be indistinguishable from normal behavior, Its essentially a pseudo turing test. Can we mass produce social media accounts that pass for human to both humans and automated systems.

I'm really not sure how someone can identify this unless they are trained.

If you don't know the account holder in person, or through word of mouth in a social context, don't follow them.

However, I do think they should notify every follower of said fake account, letting them know that what they've read might be false.

Delete it and go outside.

Chances this account is a bot: (I had utf-8 stars here)

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