
An army of volunteer ‘elves’ fights disinfo in the Czech Republic - hhs
https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/volunteers-fight-disinfo-czech-republic/
======
colordrops
I'm sure there are organizations that earnestly and in good faith fight
disinformation online, but whenever I hear the term "online army to fight
disinfo" it's almost certainly another group also trying to put their own spin
on things rather than asserting some objective ground truth.

~~~
slightwinder
It's always just a matter of perspective. What are one sides freedom fighters,
are the other sides terrorist. This will never change as long as people are
fighting for "truth and justice".

~~~
seph-reed
> It's always just a matter of perspective

Straight-up lying does exist. And to quote the article:

“We must persuade the general public that fake news and disinformation are
simply not a question of different opinions, but a planned campaign organized
by foreign actors,” Kučík said. “This is a serious matter.”

~~~
slightwinder
> Straight-up lying does exist.

And? All side lies. People lie to fight lies. Is a smaller evil good when it
serve the greater goodness or still bad? Is false good still good when you
don't see the lie? What if you the lie but not the greater good?

~~~
ColanR
Lies are lies - and it's increasingly easy to see through them. From a purely
pragmatic standpoint, the reason not to lie is that you will probably be
caught, and after that you will not be trusted.

The information age will force the art of PR to reevaluate itself at a
fundamental level.

~~~
slightwinder
> Lies are lies - and it's increasingly easy to see through them.

No, it's not. If everyone lies, how do you know what's real? The reveal could
be a lie too. You need to have expertise in the specific area to know whether
it's a lie or not. Or you trust nothing, or everything, or just convincing
sources.

That's a reason why fake-news work so well, because people can't trust
anything anymore, some people choose the sources which from their point of
view are the least untrustable. In which case certain lies have no relevance
for them anymore.

> the reason not to lie is that you will probably be caught, and after that
> you will not be trusted.

Reality has disprooven this more than enough. Unless it's a big lie with legal
consequences, getting caught is just a temporary sting which in best case goes
under in the flood of daily noise and comes long after the lie was spread, in
which case it has no relevance anyway.

~~~
ColanR
> You need to have expertise in the specific area to know whether it's a lie
> or not

That is exactly my point. The knowledge that the expertise is based on is
available for everyone. If you actually read the conspiracy theories around
the virus, and don't allow popular media to tell you they're all idiots, you'd
find there is very well researched information out there. You don't need an
academic position to know how to do research. And if you know enough, you can
validate for yourself of what you're told is true - unless you advocate taking
the official sources as unquestionable.

> Reality has disproven this more than enough.

I was thinking the current distrust of the WHO and China was enough evidence
of my claim being true. Not to mention the declining trust in mass media
(though whether that last one is deserved is a rather partisan question).

Getting caught in a lie is not "just a temporary sting": it's why people
become "conspiracy theorists", which is another way of saying, someone who
doesn't trust the official story.

------
aleyan
Normally I am highly supportive of volunteer based efforts. However for
political causes volunteers tend have political biases, which make the results
less than authoritative. According to this [1] article from University of
Manchester researchers, even EU supported volunteer anti-disinformation
campaigns seems to produce more of it themselves. And yes, I did confirm that
the "reframingrussia.com" domain does belong to a University of Manchester
group[2].

[1]
[https://reframingrussia.com/2020/04/06/covid-19-disinformati...](https://reframingrussia.com/2020/04/06/covid-19-disinformation-
two-short-reports-on-the-russian-dimension/)

[2]
[https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/ref...](https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/reframing-
russia-for-the-global-mediasphere-from-cold-war-to-information-
war\(12ff514a-6b46-4b0c-b190-76754ccb0033\).html)

~~~
JChase2
That's super interesting. It's hard to imagine what a legitimately
authoritative anti-disinformation campaign would look like. Back when
Operation INFEKTION was big, in the 80's iirc, the U.S. Department of State
was involved in trying to counter claims of AIDS being of U.S. origin by
sending out letters to many news outlets. Mostly the details of these letters
were worked out by a group known as the "Active Mea-sures Working Group".

As far as I know, they were basically underfunded and understaffed, but worked
hard to try to tease out the truth and track down the origins of
disinformation. These days I'm not sure if it would help or hurt to have the
likes of the CIA, FBI, DoD, etc running these groups considering peoples lack
of trust in them. It's a tough problem for sure.

~~~
ColanR
That's why independent media is so important. The government will always be
assumed to have a spin on things: can you imagine if Trump had the US
department of state doing what you described? No democrat would ever believe
it was unbiased.

It's unfortunate that the government is not the only powerful player in town.
Doesn't help that even Amazon owns a news outlet these days.

------
igammarays
If you want to hear the other side of this story, I can recommend Gilbert
Doctorow's books or blog. Thoroughly fascinating readings.

He's a fiercely independent yet diligent fact-based writer, a (Harvard-
graduate) international affairs specialist based in Belgium and Russia. His
non-conformist books "Does Russia Have A Future?" and "A Belgian Perspective
on International Affairs" are eye-opening as it gives a rarely seen Russian
perspective on the information wars. He doesn't deny Russian malfeasance, but
he claims that the Russians are often acting in reaction to a vicious,
calculated anti-Russian information campaign in the West which often operates
under the guise of human rights activism.

Far from being opinion pieces, he does some excellent investigative journalism
with first-hand reports of people, events, press conferences, statements and
sometimes blatant falsehoods attributed to Russia, providing evidence of
Western "propaganda". Really helps to see the current media situation as an
information war or New Cold War, rather than a simple case of "the Russians
are evil and they lie all the time and hate us for no reason" which is the
narrative that seems to run in the West. That Western narrative really makes
no sense to the independent thinker.

~~~
burkaman
This is interesting, but it's a sort of tangentially related story, not "the
other side of this story".

Whether or not Russia is a victim itself or has been provoked or whatever is
not relevant as to whether these volunteers are doing a good thing.

------
jkadlec
It's interesting that they're targeting chain emails first. I would say
comments on the Czech news sites are a bigger problem. Usually the Russian
trolls are easy to spot (they use words and terms that people just don't
normally use, like "demoblok" to denote the political parties which are
critical to Russia), but sometimes it can be quite subtle. Then again maybe
the news sites themselves should regulate this.

------
OneGuy123
He who controls the definition of "disinfo"

controls the world.

~~~
thoraway1010
Yep - when I questioned my local health authorities guidance that if "healthy"
I should take off my mask on crowded public transit and when working with the
very elderly (adult day health) I was told to avoid "disinformation" (in
writing) and to follow surgeon general and their guidance and take off my mask
on public transit and while working with the elderly.

A month later they flip-flopped on that ironically. I wonder if they started
to believe some of the "disinformation" that wearing masks is a low cost
though imperfect way to reduce spread.

I've found actual scientists working with these diseases are pretty on it for
logic, but folks like epidemiologists are sometimes totally horrendous. Is
epidemiology less rigorous then other infectious disease educational tracks?

~~~
dmurray
Epidemiology during a pandemic is about one part science to three parts PR.
Sending a consistent message to the public and getting them to change their
behaviour at all is more important than getting the details right.

In the case of masks, the WHO decided early on that masks for the public were
of limited use in slowing coronavirus spread: they'd stop some infections but
could be detrimental if misused and could threaten the supply to medical
professionals. This was a reasonable conclusion at the time. To communicate
that to the public, the party line was: masks no good. Many national
organisations took their cue from the WHO.

Now the risk/reward tradeoff has shifted: better research shows that masks,
even ersatz ones, are good and the supply lines for professionals have
improved. So the message has to change: masks good.

The actual scientists know that it's not black and white, but pretending it is
is a useful tool for health organisations.

At some point I expect we'll see a flip-flop on the party line that "there is
no evidence that covid-19 infection confers immunity against future
infection". It's nonsense - there are hundreds of years of circumstantial
evidence - but it's just about defensible in that there haven't been any
sufficiently powerful blinded trials to directly demonstrate it specifically
for Covid-19. Once it's deemed to be in the public good, they'll accept some
study showing exposure does indeed confer immunity.

~~~
ColanR
> The actual scientists know that it's not black and white, but pretending it
> is is a useful tool for health organisations.

Coming from a family of doctors (thought not one myself), I've assimilated the
background knowledge to recognize the official BS surrounding face masks and
the like. It's been eye-opening, and it certainly made me trust the official
story far less. If they're 'stretching the truth' about face masks, what other
information about the virus is less than honest?

The pretense is good PR - as long as people trust you, and don't know better.
What epidemiologists and PR folks need to realize is that the Information Age
has left most people in my position, with more information than they used to
have. That means useful lies are seen as such, and the population stops
beliveing the approved experts, because there's plenty more with great
credentials online saying other things.

~~~
stareatgoats
> What epidemiologists and PR folks need to realize is that the Information
> Age

I don't think we have begun to understand what effect this will have on age-
old institutions that relied on inside knowledge to maintain their ivory tower
existence (and privileges). We already see some sword-rattling and expert
communities becoming increasingly defensive. Doctors and other experts are
obviously still in charge, no serious web service will give actual medical
advice without referring to "your physician" \- but it's a matter of time
before that will change if the current trends continue. Let's check back in 30
years or so.

~~~
ColanR
As long as deviation can be successfully labelled as 'conspiracy theory', the
institutions probably won't have too much trouble. It's when the majority of
people begin to see the BS in at least one area, that things will likely
change. But that also depends on critical thinkers.

------
seph-reed
This seems awesome and it weirds me out how many anti posts there are... is it
better this whole thing just be one sided? Maybe nobody read the article, it's
not like they're filtering anything. They're just doing the opposite of
spreading disinformation, to the best of their abilities.

------
galfarragem
How about educate people to make that filtering by themselves?

Nobody owns the truth. It's the last thing I want is an horde of elves making
that filtering for me.

~~~
burkaman
That's what they're doing. They don't have any power to filter anything. I
recommend reading the article, it's pretty short.

------
billfruit
Perhaps it is better usage now to call them Czechia rather than the Czech
Republic. We usually speak of France, not the French Republic.

~~~
kanox
Not clear why you're being downvoted, I remember the Czech government
explicitly requesting this.

------
jimhefferon
Any similar organizations in the US?

