do they? everything i've seen seems to show that this sort of censorship really does work basically exactly as intended. for example, https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...
letting misinformation spread tends to spread misinformation. shutting misinformation campaigns down disrupts them, and if done broadly enough prevents new ones from gaining traction. yes, it might spawn new conspiracy theories, but if they only reach a few people they cause far less harm than the widespread misinformation that the actions are meant to disrupt.
But I don't think that's a problem. You'll never rid the world of viciously tribal behaviour, so your only hope is to herd the perpetrators away to a location where their actions will bother as few people as possible.
I’m sympathetic to that second point, but I don’t know if I agree isolation is what’s driving the gap in understanding. The tone of disagreement has veered heavily toward saber-rattling in the last decade, which predictably encourages opponents to embrace more extreme positions in an ideological arms race.
It doesn’t take long for that mechanic to generate a chasm of understanding or respect, since reversing it would require one side to “disarm” in hopes their opponent would do the same and meet them in the middle. The trust just isn’t there and so the chasm continues to grow, further eroding trust along the way.
Everyone has an agenda and when the people who label something as misinformation are in a small group and are unaccountable to the public, it’s almost inevitable this will happen, considering the incentives.
The argument, as I understand it, is that frequent and continued use of these techniques over time lead to those issues.
Anecdotally I have had several conversations with younger, misguided men, that considered the suppression of holocaust denial information was proof that it never happened. In their logic, why would would some much effort be placed in suppressing this information if it was so obviously false.
I am in favor of shutting down misinformation (although I also know the same tools can be used for bad reasons), but I think the field of digital mass communication is young enough so that we're best served by remaining open to new discoveries.
I do wonder if we'd be better off phrasing this as a conversation about discoverability rather than one about censorship.
What a world.
Speaking as a leftist, I assume that corporations view me and my ideology as an enemy and would silence me and others like me if we became too influential. I don't think compelled speech is the answer, and I don't believe I have any intrinsic right to use social media to amplify my messages.
Do tell? I haven't been there in a long time and don't have time to keep up with education policy.
>Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools...
Do you have a link about this? Because I would love to know of such a technique. Some of my family doesn't know how to identify conspiracy theories from truths.
In my experience, the tech community hates this form of education (the humanities).
> having many different media platforms with different agendas allows for balance and exposure to various facts
This can be a false balance. The Clintons aren't drinking the blood of babies. Cranks suck up all of the oxygen around a discussion, they don't expand it.
> This can be a false balance. The Clintons aren't drinking the blood of babies. Cranks suck up all of the oxygen around a discussion, they don't expand it.
It isn't. Social media hasn't decided on its own that Biden won the election. The state governments that perform the election and publish the results did that.
I've got a PhD in CS. I've spent 22 years in the organized education system. Yet I'm barely able to actually understand research results in adjacent CS subfields, let alone an entire scientific discipline. It is absolutely not feasible for even a dedicated person to become meaningfully expert in a large number of fields.
> What exactly do humanities courses help me with here?
The primary loop of humanities work is critical analysis of texts written by humans. A field like history is literally media analysis, except that the media was created by actors in the past rather than actors today.
Not that "we" are any better -- we can't even get technologists (or doctors) to understand statistics. How can we hope for a general-population understanding of scientific process?
My answer: We can't. We can hope for leadership that steers the conversation in a useful direction, but democracy sometimes gets in the way of the elevation of useful leaders, and the media has no interest in promoting good (mostly boring) governance.
I'm not sure exactly what makes them different from more focused forums, but it's something and – in my opinion – I don't think it's a net good for society.
Personally, I have no account with these services. I used to but I deleted all of them and it's made my life richer, not poorer.
Have you ever been on a smaller focused forum without mods or rules? I haven’t.
Pornhub (based in Canada) recently decided to allow uploads only from verified accounts due to political pressure. Twitter/Fb could also require ID verification, for example. They basically already do (require a cell number after account creation), but it's not enforced in all countries.
Anyway, no magic bullet, but if they are held accountable, they will find solutions pretty quickly, as Pornhub did.
Do you have evidence for that? What if you're wrong and your suggestion is making it worse? It's bold to claim in the age of social media that you know the best way to control it when we're in new territory.
It's not like the 80s or 90s when the only way to get and spread news was gated through a small number of newspapers and TV channels. If the media at the time refused to publish a story because of quality or trustworthiness issues, is that really so different here?
Are there simple ways to learn the above?
1. While reading, remember every writer has an agenda, and that you read a specific point of view, and there may be others
2. Differentiate between facts and opinions while reading
3. Actively expose yourself to an opposite opinion about the subject
Number 3 is the most important.
Actively exposing yourself is also not something I expect to be helpful. I dove into the 5G conspiracy theory and it's not like the statements or the people are retarded. They will bring reasonable-sounding arguments and respond to you in proper language. I needed to dig rather deep and have a really decent understanding of radio-related topics to know that there isn't a grain of truth to it. For example, digging into sources of sources of sources, you discover that the trail runs cold. Does that mean a statement was made up, or that you just can't find it? It's rather hard to prove that a certain paper does not exist (some of the court-submitted documents referenced papers published by reputable organisations and I figured "surely they don't lie to the court, this has to be somewhere?!" It's a huge time sink and I even got help from one of the believers in digging up the reference, but I never found it and they never got back to me). And even if you find the source, how can you tell if it's real if you don't have a basic understanding of the topic yourself? Exposing yourself to the other side mainly helps when you currently believe the conspiracy theory, which is exactly what you're trying to prevent in the first place. If you're susceptible to this sort of thing, I'd not be surprised if this advice gets more people sucked into the wrong things.
All we need to see are nationwide initiatives being planned, funded and executed broadly across education channels.
Could you provide some references that indicate this is happening? Or at least beginning to happen? Is this a viable proposed solution, or is it rather a theoretical or philosophical alternative to real solutions to the mass misinformation crisis?
Do we know how many "fact checkers" lost their jobs after they were 100% wrong about the "Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation" claims?
This is why:
> you stop the spread of incorrect ideas
is a dangerous method - you do stop the spread, but who says you do it right?
Obviously in the past these small groups of people have made the wrong decision, and sometimes that's had very bad consequences. I am not arguing that this is a good methodology. I am arguing that we can't assume that public debate will generate a better set of decisions.
It's going to be quite something to see if twitter/facebook/google can create a digital ghetto for half the country.
Censorship and sanctions are less preferred because:
1. They create even more distrust and encourage conspiracy theories
2. More importantly, just like journalists (who have agendas), fact checkers also have agendas. The journalism problem is solved by pluralism: having many different media platforms with different agendas allows for balance and exposure to various facts. However, due to the monopolistic nature of the social platforms, we can't have that here. What happens is that a very small number of people controls what we know and what we don't. Just imagine if Fox News was the only news platform - devastating, isn't it?
For these reasons, social media should not be allowed to decide on they're own what is fact and what is not.