> or links to debunkings of fringe theories

Sadly won't be helpful, and may actually make things worse:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont...

IMO I think it's useful to avoid getting moderates and people who don't know better caught up in the mess.

For people who are already convinced, they're already convinced. Banning the content entirely also doesn't help. People are very good at spreading information, even if you manage to ban all conspiracies from the internet, you have TV, the newspaper, private networks, and just word-of-mouth.

Another good tool would be to teach kids how to identify misinformation. You don't have to worry about belief perseverance when there's no belief yet.

However, in past decades, those other networks didn't cause the same level of propagation of misinformation.

I can't teach your kids to identify misinformation against your will and theirs.

That wikipedia link for the backfire effect directly mentions failure to reproduce the findings.

I will assume that's true, or you won't find this reply very convincing.

Of course this is undoubtedly true. However, deleting the information creates a Streisand effect and a much stronger belief perseverance and backfire effect compared to annotating the information with a counter-argument.

Between the three options of "delete", "annotate", and "leave untouched", I think the least-bad option is probably the middle one. It's not going to dissuade many people and will only reinforce beliefs for many, but there's not much else that can be done.

You clearly have a strong belief that it won't be helpful, so I won't try to argue with you.

Facebook already does this and people just claim it’s fake news being pushed by “the elite.”

I've been on Facebook since you needed an edu address. I've never had anything I posted flagged in anyway until recently during the Colonial Pipeline shutdown. A friend posted a photo of a person filling up buckets with gasoline. I responded with "An oldie but goodie" and a photo of a woman filling up plastic shopping bag with gasoline. A couple days later I got a notification from Facebook that I was spreading disinformation. The image I posted was from 2019, not 2021 their notification said. As punishment, my future posts for a unspecified amount of time will get low ranked in everyone's feeds. Problem is, I never claimed the image was from 2021. I even called it an oldie. I've never run into trouble with Facebook's truthiness machine before but now I'm in some sort of penalty box for who knows how long. As far as I can tell, there's no way to appeal this or even let them know that their process is flawed. Facebook has labeled me as the spreader of disinformation and that's the end of it. Nothing else can be done. Their judgement is final. These are the people we want controlling the flow of information and this is the process we want them to use to do it?

I would expect that this was fully automatic response, so there was nobody reading your message. Facebook somehow detected that your photo was too old. On the internet "fake" photo's are frequently posted and it is understandable that Facebook takes countermeasures. It is really difficult to find a good solution.

> claim it’s fake news being pushed by “the elite.”

The "fake news" part is always disputable on a case by case basis, but the "elite" part is indisputable. A very small number of very wealthy people get to decide the range of opinions that are acceptable, and the deviations that get administrative comments. The mods aren't the auteurs - mods that correct incorrectly will be fired. Close calls rattle up the chain of command until they hit the CEO/Founder, who is often a billionaire, always very wealthy, always of a particular demographic.

Because it is? Telling someone what to think is the fastest way to guarantee that they will not listen to anything you say.

I’m simply responding to someone giving an idea that is already out there and doesn’t work.

Because much of it is fake news being pushed by the elite. Look at precisely what we're discussing: the lab leak scenario, which Facebook labeled with warnings (at best) or simply banned/deleted/removed (at worst).

And now, the media establishment is doing some kind of re-think, and it turns out that while far from proven, a lab leak (which covers a variety of scenarios, most not involving any kind of "engineered" virus) is a reasonable hypothesis. If that's so, why the capricious banning and warning labels?

We've seen similar situations play out in the past year with masks (at first, they were unnecessary and racist, then absolutely critical, now it's changing again). How about just let people decide for themselves? There will always be some conspiracists on both the left and right, but most people figure this stuff out in a reasonable manner.

> but most people figure this stuff out in a reasonable manner.

That's getting tenuous. Fully 25% of the populace believe "alternative facts" that their Representatives claim are true, but those Representatives cite those very people as the source of truth! It's "citogenesis" in the real world!

Of course some people will disagree.

I don't see that as a problem.

WARNING: BurningFrog aspires to be Emperor

You are assuming that the net negative for society is never high enough to justify kicking liars and crazy people off your platform. That seems like a remarkable conclusion. Lets take for example Alex Jones spreading the lie that kids didn't die in school shootings and the people talking about their dead kids are making it up. Do you keep spreading it until a whack job kills somebody? Until some parent commits suicide?

What about health misinformation that if propagated will kill thousands? How many dead is enough to act?

What if false info about vaccines keeps enough from being vaccinated long enough for a new variant to emerge that infects the previously immune and the net effect is millions die?

I don't think you want to be elected Emperor over this at all its a shittier job than you imagine.