
Facebook, Reddit, Google, Twitter, YouTube joint statement on misinformation - doener
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/facebook-reddit-google-linkedin-microsoft-twitter-and-youtube-issue-joint-statement-on-misinformation/
======
grandpoobah
Anybody else noticed how bad Google search is at search nowadays? YouTube
search too. Both of these search engines used to be incredible at turning up
results when provided with even the most obscure search terms, but now all of
the top results are from main stream media news sites. In their quest to
control the spread of misinformation they have neutered their core product. I
miss the good old days :(

~~~
bjourne
Yeah, you're not the first to notice that. It is very apparent when you search
on YouTube for a politicians name and especially if that politician has been
involved in a scandal. For American politicians, American mainstream media
outlets such as Washington Post, CBS, ABC, Fox News and CNN dominate the
search results on the first few pages. Same thing with other countries
politicians so for British politicians you get videos from BBC, The Telegraph,
The Guardian and so on. This happens even as those videos are not the most
watched, most highly rated or most recent.

Independent media outlets that live on YouTube's advertising revenue are
completely furious about it but powerless to do anything about it.

I don't think it makes the public better informed either. The most powerful
propaganda tool is not misinformation but misdirection. Positive news gets
boosted and negative news gets suppressed. Essentially that is happening when
YouTube boosts mainstream media. One actors view is boosted and all dissenting
views are suppressed.

~~~
cooljacob204
This is what happens when Google forces Amp and other similar metrics in their
rankings. Only companies with a sizable IT department can keep up.

~~~
bjourne
What is Amp? My feeling is that YouTube has special rules which favor these tv
networks. I'm noticing the same trend in YouTube results for my own country's
political news, albeit on a smaller scale. The major broadcasters videos seems
boosted somehow.

------
paganel
Last I checked Twitter had suspended an account who was providing relevant
information out of China when the virus was still mostly affecting only them,
I think that was around February 20th or so. Yeah, that account was also
publishing videos that some might have thought as too bleak (i.e. videos of
very desperate people), but that was the actual situation on the ground in
Hubei province. Had we listened to videos like those earlier we wouldn't have
been in this situation.

------
hadrien01
Techcrunch redirects me to guce.advertising.com, is there an alternative link?

Edit: Oh apparently it's just this paragraph (found it on about.fb.com):

 _> “We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We’re
helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud
and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our
platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government
healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as
we work to keep our communities healthy and safe.”_

~~~
aembleton
I had to whitelist guce.advertising.com. Couldn't find any way around it.

~~~
close04
The way I approached this was to avoid anything that has to do with
techcrunch. I am more than happy to read the comments on such postings but no
way in hell am I clicking on that intentional dumpster fire of trackers,
advertisement, convoluted consent forms, etc. I can't help but treat that site
as malicious. The fact that such links/sites still end up top of the front
page on a site like HN is a bit surprising for me.

------
aestetix
Not sure why I should be trusting Big Tech companies to tell me what is
"misinformation." Did I miss the event where they proved themselves worthy of
being such gatekeepers?

------
rufusroflpunch
So glad the government and corporations are working together to ensure I may
not have an unapproved thought.

~~~
raxxorrax
Also all these nice voluntary helpers that like boots too.

I mean there are just so many reasons to do that because people are so bad.

------
notlukesky
Censorship is the path that leads to tyranny. Better to have all sides without
being muzzled. Today’s truth can be tomorrow’s fake news and vice versa.

Either they are publishers or platforms.

They can always put disclaimers by every “news.”

~~~
maccard
The issue is that these companies are now providing a platform for the
"village idiot", and it's up to people to differentiate truth from falsehoods,
which is surprisingly difficult to do on a topic you don't know anyything
about.

~~~
bjourne
Are you old enough to remember the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war? The village
idiots are maybe not who you think they are.

------
a_c
I don't think the proliferation of fake news is due to the lack of
gatekeeping. I think the issue is the ease of authoring fake content.

Publishing a piece of news/article used to mean hosting a website, registering
a domain, writing html, running a web server. All require studying, the very
action to battle disinformation.

Now all we have to do is make an account (or even not) and start typing on
keyboard.

Opinion is like a-hole, everyone got one. But not every piece of opinion as
useful as an a-hole. Lowering the bar of publishing is normalising the
weighting of each opinion. Which I think is the root cause of today's internet

~~~
techntoke
You'd be surprised how many fake news artist and disinformation agents have
pleasantly designed websites. The problem isn't so much that anyone can post
something on Reddit, and people believe it as fact. It is that they read it on
Reddit, then their browser history curates their recommended videos on YouTube
to validate what they read using real people who make money off these ideas,
then they send money to their Patreon to get the exclusive information which
includes access to a nice looking website.

Here are some examples:

[https://lightonconspiracies.com/](https://lightonconspiracies.com/)
[https://charlesortel.com/](https://charlesortel.com/)
[https://truepundit.com/category/featured/](https://truepundit.com/category/featured/)
[https://crowdsourcethetruth.org/](https://crowdsourcethetruth.org/)

Those are just a few of hundreds, if not thousands.

------
Onanymous
Hi there, the "Ministry of Truth"!

------
rvz
The "internet companies" are trying to tackle something that is beyond their
control and from the looks of it is close to impossible to contain
misinformation and disinformation. So it results them to have a deep
integration into our lives and the way the internet works in general. (Google
and Facebook can _never_ be taken down, even when they still have content seen
as 'offensive', 'misleading' or just completely false by some).

"Don't believe _everything_ you see or hear on the internet" \- _The Internet_

~~~
raxxorrax
But their attempts to promote authoritative sources like news media that also
happens to be in a direct business relationship with them is swallowed up like
a blessing. Completely delusional. Maybe not true for reddit, I think they do
it for random reasons.

This is the actual consequences of stripping down education on every front.

------
jquery
Ironic, considering that “misinfo” was the name of the game when WHO was in
charge of downplaying this, and anyone following mainstream media got caught
completely flat footed when the dam broke, while I am well stocked up on
supplies I purchased in late January.

I know there’s a lot of disinfo and rumors out there. But I don’t want them
shutting it all down. Put a warning over it if you must. But without some of
these sources I would not have learned about the severity of the virus in time
to prepare.

------
austincheney
Specific only to COVID-19.

I don’t see social media companies making any dent on misinformation. Here are
a variety of examples.

* Troll farms that deliberately seek to manipulate gullible people for unrelated motivations.

* Fanatics, which are the same as troll farms except their motives are aligned to what they claim.

* Cults which are also just like troll farms except their motives are centered around the desires of a central person or idol.

* Liars. People who deliberately mislead others for personal reasons nor affiliated with an organization.

* Stupid people are like liars except their deceit is not deliberate and they have primarily fooled themselves and want to share their foolishness, such as people who put their heads in the sand and twist themselves into knots to ignore evidence when pushing opinions onto people.

* Gullible people are those who spread any information they believe to be true where truth is only based on popularity, conformity, or social expediency.

I want to see how social media eliminates that.

------
cannedslime
So what counts as misinformation? There is a lot of uninformed statements
about SARS-CoV-2 everywhere, including goverments like mine that says that you
are "safe" if you just stay 1-2m away from infected persons.

If you ask me, constantly calling this SARS strain Corona, Covid-19 etc. can
count as misinformation as well.

------
bluGill
They will still accept money to show ads for vitamins and other useless
"supplements" I'm sure fake news will remain okay if you pay them to spread
it.

------
Quequau
I've been moderating a handful of communities over on Reddit for about ten
years now, among them several are focused on hearing health. Something I see
as a matter of routine is the roughly 21 day arc of folks learning that some
aliment exists to speaking intentionally as if they are an educated medical
professional, while essentially medical rumour and legend mongering.

I don't think this is limited to those with issues of hearing health and I
suspect that, while it's more common in circles where doctors often give
unspecific bad news with no real resolution (something that many folks don't
want to hear), it's not limited to them either.

Right now on Reddit there are scores of subreddits focused on COVID-19 and the
Coronavirus, with really terrible moderation. If the admins were actually
serious about dealing with missinfo they'd be shutting more than a few down.

~~~
PeterisP
The problem is that if we look back with hindsight, knowing what we know now,
then back in (for example) early february there's a lot of material in the
"Reddit rumors" that turned out to be accurate and the official position of
certain major governments and even WHO was misleading, possibly intentionally.

Yes, it's important to reduce misinformation, but it's also important (and
IMHO even more important) to allow challenging the official information. The
issue of "truth vs misinformation" is orthogonal to whether the information is
approved by some particular source. So what I'm worried about is when the
official position of some nationstate conflicts with the truth, then they'll
be able to label the truth "misinformation" and get it removed/suppressed
because of that, and that is something we definitely want to avoid. Sure,
politicians can call anything they dislike as misinformation or fake news, but
it's imperative that they don't get the ability to remove/suppress that
information just because of that.

Rumors spread in the absence of trustworthy, extensive, reliable information.
If in some situation there's no trustworthy, extensive, reliable information
provided (for example, about the early situation in Iran) and rumors is all we
can get, then rumors don't need to be suppressed as they are the best source
of truth available even if it's not perfect.

~~~
makomk
Not just the WHO and major governments. Remember the whole wave of "worry
about the flu, not the coronavirus" articles, some of which outright said that
people were irrational for worrying about it? The press haven't got better
since either, they've just changed the narrative they're misleading people
towards.

~~~
xiphias2
The press that has got ,,better'' just is doing the minimum necessary to
publish anything believable by a non-informed person. At this point anybody
can look at Italy and see that COVID is clearly not better than the flu.

------
HumblyTossed
Sadly, this does not appear to apply to popular politicians who can't seem to
grasp what their advisors are telling them.

------
easytiger
Reddit r/coronavirusuk pretty much taken over by left wing extremists turning
it into a political football match with barely a rational thing there.

Currently full of anti government propaganda, much of it unrelated to the
virus.

------
jakeogh
data:
[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

------
heyoo
I had high hopes from this title. Unfortunately, it only involves
misinformation in regards to COVID-19.

I would really hope they would unite in a joint effort against the spread of
propaganda from fake accounts instead.

As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, take a look at Bot Sentinel top 100
trollbots [1].

#1 @BrandonBeckham_ is (from my judgment) a fake twitter account [2]. He poses
as a veteran Christian that loves everything Trump. All he posts is pro-Trump
stuff & Donald J. Trump retweets him frequently.

This is the stuff that needs moderation for misinformation. This is
_dangerous_ - it affects people's minds and changes their minds. But somehow
this stuff is just ignored by Big Tech.

[1]: [https://botsentinel.com/top-100](https://botsentinel.com/top-100)

[2]:
[https://twitter.com/brandonbeckham_](https://twitter.com/brandonbeckham_)

------
BickNowstrom
From this pandemic I learned that the current internet is far too controlled
for information. I got most of my (by now confirmed) information from early
leaks. Of course there are ridiculous hoaxes and bad advice floating around,
but it pales in comparison to the erroneous information that authorities are
putting out, and it is way easier to distinguish as BS.

For instance, I have read from official sources:

Vitamin C does not help. Garlic (powerful anti-inflammatory and antiviral)
will not help. Black and green tea will not help. Chance of infection outside
of China is negligible. Human-to-human transmission is unlikely. Coronaviruses
don't survive on plastics and metal surfaces. Taking anti-inflammatory drugs
is not dangerous. Face masks are not protective against the virus. Gargling
and swallowing hot iodized salt water does nothing. The virus is not mutating
and not creating more deadly strains. The virus can't be made by humans. The
official statistics are real and not a gross undercount. Cities will not go in
lockdown or quarantine. Longer than expected incubation periods are not
impossible. Sauna's and hot showers don't help. Everything is under control
and contained. The flu is more deadly. You should not avoid public transit or
large gatherings. We have enough ventilators. We have enough protective
equipment for medics. You should not be worried about COVID-19 if you got flu-
like symptoms before the first confirmed case on 19 January. The CDC is and
was not lying about the number of cases, and warnings circulating online
reporting community spread are hoaxes. The virus can not pass the brain-blood
barrier. The virus does not increase chance of triggering latent schizophrenia
and psychosis. Some national from a different country did not die outside of
China before the WHO called a world health emergency. This is not yet a
pandemic. Fantasies about coronavirus are more contagious than the disease
itself. Not eating in Chinatown restaurants is racist. When hand sanitizer ran
out, it's not a good idea to make your own hand sanitizer. Countries in Europe
won't follow Italy. The virus started in a wet market in Wuhan. You can't
blame China for the pandemic, they did a great job and set an example for
outbreak response. Papers discussing HIV inserts and gain-of-function
infectiousness are retracted because they are completely false, not for
fueling conspiracy theories. This virus is not a viable bioweapon, because the
mortality rate is too low. The pope will not have coronavirus. Trump will not
have coronavirus. Bolsonaro will not have coronavirus. The stock market is
looking good right now. There is no reason for panic. This virus is not
expected to calm down around June, only to pick up again in November. The
government thinks that shaking hands is ok. Experts are right. Experts give
correct projections. It is better to listen to public health officials and
experts if you want to stay up to date and predict what will happen. There are
no terrible long-term concerns of contracting COVID-19 for young people.

I can provide sources upon request if you believe any of these statements.

An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people!
Stop managing panic and come clean: You all lost control of a SARS-like virus
and containment is impossible.

Instead of quarantining subreddits, you may want to take a look at the immense
sockpuppetry from China nr. 1 accounts and the trade war driven anti-China
propaganda from U.S. intelligence. Even on HackerNews I get multiple downvotes
on posts that are long on page 5. There is a gross information warfare going
on, but hey, got to protect against my Facebook aunt trying to give
(scientifically unproven) well-intentioned advice, in the absence of any
certainty.

Google prioritizes information such as "How to protect yourself against novel
coronavirus? Cough in your elbows!". They are arrogantly acting like the
public can't handle the truth.

------
tasogare
What will they do concretely? They already missed a window of 2 months ago
where they could have had an impact by censuring WHO, European governments and
news agency that were spreading fake news in the like of "it's just a flu",
"2% mortality".

~~~
avip
It's in the statement. Elevate official and authoritative information over
fake news and lies.

~~~
paganel
"Official and authoritative information" in Germany is that only 17 people
have died out of the 7500+ officially infected with the virus, with "official
information" like that it's not hard for "unofficial information" to be closer
to the truth on the ground.

~~~
close04
Are you using intuition to say that the numbers can't be right or some
knowledge of real numbers?

So how many did die of Coronavirus in reality? If someone is already suffering
from life threatening complications would this still count as a Covid death?

~~~
paganel
> If someone is already suffering from life threatening complications would
> this still count as a Covid death?

The Western official media was strongly denouncing the Chinese authorities
when they were doing similar things a month or so ago in Hubei. Following that
same logic I guess cancer is not the number one killer in the world, it's
either the respiratory failure caused by that cancer or the related
infections. But this is just Western hubris in play, as in "our numbers can
never be wrong, reality be damned", and I say that as a guy from the Western
"side".

~~~
close04
> Following that same logic I guess cancer is not the number one killer in the
> world, it's either the respiratory failure caused by that cancer or the
> related infections

But you are not following the same logic. Mine was an honest question while
you seem to pick a particular (mis)interpretation.

Complications of a particular illness are part of that illness. I'm talking
about adding Coronavirus complications to already life threatening ones from
_other_ diseases. HIV/AIDS are considered the killers even if it's unrelated
infections that cause the actual death.

Case in point, I was in the hospital when 2 patients with less that 1% chance
of surviving (cancer, no immune system) contracted an antibiotic resistant
bacteria. They both subsequently died and this was attributed to the cancer
not the bacteria because it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that they
would have died within days regardless.

So if someone with no immune system dies of Covid-19 can you reasonably say
Coronavirus killed them? Or would any minor complication have done the same?
If you have a heart attack while driving but it's the crash that actually
kills you the cause of death is considered the heart attack.

~~~
paganel
> So if someone with no immune system dies of Covid-19 can you reasonably say
> Coronavirus killed them?

Yes, especially if those persons were walking freely and minding about their
own lives just a week or two before, as is the case with the majority of the
people that have died in Italy because of covid. I highly suspect that only a
small fraction of those that died were days or weeks away from dying of other
causes. To put things into perspective, from somewhere that I just read now
reguarding the situation in Bergamo:

> In Bergamo, normally, about 3/4 people die every day.

> Only yesterday 50 died. 50 deaths in a single day, in a city where 3 usually
> die.

Bergamo is one of the best developed cities in Northern Italy and as such one
of the best developed in Western Europe, I fail to see how the Germans are
very different.

~~~
close04
> Yes, especially if those persons were walking freely and minding about their
> own lives just a week or two before,

Then as I said, we're not talking about the same people. I'm strictly
wondering how do the patients already on the death bed count. Not about more
or less healthy people who are struck down by Covid-19. There are plenty of
terminally ill patients in hospitals and they have a good chance of being
exposed to this (there are hospitals in Italy where 70% of the personnel
tested came out positive).

------
meritt
This is a great move but I hope everyone is ready to hear a lot of "those west
coast liberals are suppressing our freedom of speech!" for the foreseeable
future.

~~~
raxxorrax
More about how west coast liberals need a carefully crafted stream of
information. People don't like it because it seems infantile.

