The part of this that I think is most interesting is that the high level flow of the article goes from "some dude doesn't wash his hands" to "tobacco companies were shady about trying to sell tobacco", a brief segue into "modern monkey science is better than older monkey science" and then ... rather suddenly ... "How can we intervene in social networks to direct people toward truth and facts?".
There are really bad ideas in this article. These systems won't be used to target obviously wrong information. It'll be used to target borderline true information that turns out to be right in hindsight. What they are suggesting at the end of this is a system that will be co-opted by groups like tobacco companies to suppress the truth.
People who want "all social media sites ... employing teams to fight active misinformation and disinformation" are much more dangerous than misinformation. They are creating systematic weak points for the truth to be suppressed, and relying on the fact that surely there are now powerful or motivated bad actors who will corrupt their beautiful but delicate system!
I spent 2020 watching people with PHDs in medical fields tying themselves in knots to avoid being censored by YouTube - and saying things that turned out to be true. I'd bet not a single person working for the censors had a PHD. There is madness somewhere here.
For every PhD saying something accurate there's hundreds of far more popular disinformation sources that are backed by superstition and sometimes funded by superstitious conspiracy peddlers, and sometimes by cold war enemies. Social media is by it's nature manipulatable, those with the bots and the money win. Not to mention plenty of people with phds are looking to make that Dr.Oz money or just being a plain superstitious human being that doesn't care about the truth.
Yeah, and I think everyone in the debate agrees on that. But given that, why is there a call to set up teams of censors who have no qualifications and come from an essentially unknown culture?
It is foreseeable that the YouTube/Twitter/Facebook censorship teams will be run by someone with ties to high level people in the Democratic or Republican party. Either of those is bad. Or maybe even quiet ties to foreign governments. If not them, it'll be people who are "ex"-big tobacco or Fox News/CNN types or ... I mean, the list gets long very quickly. And by "foreseeable" I don't mean possible, I mean likely to the point of certainty. The payoffs are massive for corrupting these single points of failure and there are a lot of people out there who will try.
And the outcome of all of this is people with suspect credentials shutting down conversation or ideas from actual experts in the field.
This article is advocating bad ideas. I'll accept that they may be inevitable, but it is going to be worse than it is now. We'll be protected from stuff that is (1) harmless or (2) true but politically threatening to whoever controls social media.
> I spent 2020 watching people with PHDs in medical fields tying themselves in knots to avoid being censored by YouTube - and saying things that turned out to be true
Probably anything related to COVID. My understanding is that early on, YouTube was majorly aggressive on COVID misinformation to the point of harming creators.
My favourite was back in February or March when the official guidance was "no masks" and the consensus was "that probably isn't right".
Plus I'd like to be getting uncensored reporting on this vaccine blood clotting issue that the AstraZenica vaccine has. I didn't hear anything until it went from "vaccines are perfectly safe" to suspended [2] in multiple countries for safety concerns. Honest discussion about the vaccine side effects and safety reporting systems are exactly the sort of thing YouTube would censor, so they won't talk about it freely.
Also from memory and a Google search [0, 1] to confirm, some countries like India still suggest Hydroxycloroquine. I'd like to hear some small time experts discussing why that is vs how much of the negative response was because Trump used the word in a sentence. The fact check in particular is silent on why the recommendation is there.
If I can't listen to PHDs, why should I be listening to news pundits on this stuff?
Why does every article on mis- and dis-information I see on HN these days starts with some primer that encourages the audience to assume that it's predominantly the product of the political right? In this case the primer takes the following form:
> The utterance emerged in February 2019 from Fox & Friends presenter Pete Hegseth
This is in the first paragraph. Before the subject is properly introduced and defined, before the reader even begins processing what the article says about it, the author encourages the audience to think about how barbarous and primitive Fox News is, which is guaranteed to tint everything that follows.
This is a propaganda technique and it's becoming ubiquitous in modern writing.
If you'd gone a little bit further into the article, you'd have seen why. It's context. There's a whole discussion included where the event you're attributing to malicious priming is used as an example.
What's the alternative here? Leave the audience guessing about what's going on? Omitting the highly relevant fact the person under discussion is a TV presenter on a major news network? Going out of their way to obscure the source of a public comment so it's harder for their readers to verify? I really don't see what else they could have done.
The only quasi-reasonable alternative would be to have teased the fact, really let the readers come to the assumption the person is a crazy wacko that nobody would ever listen to, and _then_ drop the bomb he said this on Fox? Except that would turn it from an article on misinformation into a hit piece on Pete Hegseth and Fox, which I can only assume would have made you even less happy.
Seriously, what else were they supposed to do here?
I can think of a handful of "left" (for the US) outlets that I think produce content that's disinformation (for example, the first place I heard heavily play up the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was artificially created in a lab was on an obviously bullshit supplement-promoting program on the Pacifica network), and it should absolutely be appreciated that there are actors intentionally inflaming/manipulating discourse throughout the political spectrum.
But the fact is that few -- if any -- media projects where this is a consistent/repeated problem have the household recognition or reach in the way that Fox News or similar projects on the right do. Disinformation currently plays bigger and more intentional part of the political right. Not because it has to be that way (conservatism certainly doesn't require it), but key figures have accepted it as a significant part of their strategy.
I think there's a lot of stuff that goes around and left circles that is pretty bleeding heart sort of exaggeration. A lot of the "Now This" content is rather heavy handed.
But the vast majority of people on the right swallow as gospel every single bit of misinformation, and they are much more adept at getting the vast majority of the right in lock step with their misinformation. A great deal of Republicans for instance still believe that the election was somehow stolen, when it is now, because of all of the lost court cases, the most proven outcome in American election history. They believe the propaganda so much that even though they may agree with a lot of the facts that line up with the fact that it wasn't stolen, they still "believe in their hearts" that it "must've been stolen."
I don't know a better way to describe the most desired outcome of really effective propaganda than that.
It sounds like you are playing right into the OPs hands. Misinformation comes from both sides. And both sides tend to believe what their leaders tell them. You claim the best majority of the right believe the election was stolen. Joe many people felt Clinton won the prior election? The vast majority of those on the left believe CNN and NYT without question. And yet they have spouted more misinformation than almost anyone.
Yes exactly that is the exact definition of whataboutism, a classic propaganda tactic. At no time did you address the fact that I brought up that the rights propaganda is worse, nor do you bring up any aspect of refuting that they all believe this common delusion. All you tried to do is dismiss it by equating it to perhaps a lesser-believed delusion, and bring up the other side is somehow just as bad. That may be true.
Clearly, the right is worse, and I'm glad to see that you can't or don't choose to refute it any meaningful way. In a lot of traditional debate this would be a sign of concession.
> Joe many people felt Clinton won the prior election?
Your question is "whataboutism", but... the answer is: at least one order of magnitude less than the number of "conservatives" that believe the 2020 election was won by Trump. Probably multiple. Seriously. It's a vanishing fraction by comparison. Almost no one believes that systemic vote misrepresentation was a part of the 2016 election.
> The vast majority of those on the left believe CNN and NYT without question.
Do you actually know anyone on "the left"? Because my truly left-ish acquaintances despise the NYT and have a long list of specific sins they'll criticize it for going back 20 years.
> And yet they have spouted more misinformation than almost anyone.
Citation needed. Especially when this discussion is rooted in the problems of a network like Fox that, when sued, literally utilizes defenses in court such as "no reasonable person would believe our commentator" and "we have no obligation to report truthfully."
The NYT -- like any outlet -- has certainly made serious mistakes, but they have an entirely different relationship with accountability, as one would expect from a paper of record.
And here we get to the real issue you have. It's not that they started by introducing an example, but that they didn't 'both sides' it... or just pick exclusively on the left.
I don't think even this needs to be politically motivated. For this kind of article you want clear and obvious examples, that are also come up with enough credibility to not be outright ignored. Otherwise you have to get down into the weeds of a very particular situation to clearly establish that the example is misinformation, and not just information.
When it comes to obviously outlandish yet widely acknowledged statements... I don't think I have to go too far out on a limb to say the right is a particularly good place to look.
That's not to say it can't be politically motivated, but I don't think it needs to be.
They could have recognized that he was joking and doesn't actually believe that then it wouldn't be a useful anecdote. This article doesn't mention that at all and leaves the reader believing he's a "crazy wacko". That sounds like disinformation on the part of Nautilus to me.
This whole "Fox presenter doesn't believe in germs" thing is a falsehood believed by leftists because it gives them a satisfied feeling. They don't bother checking if it's true or not.
I don't understand the propaganda that you must be exposed to to not understand that that is exactly what the guy said? https://youtu.be/ZX-tRTD1lqU I mean I know he followed it up with a whole crap ton of qualifiers but if you look at this video that's pretty much exactly what he said.
Yes, he said it, but it's clearly a joke. The others a laughing. It's on a light-hearted chat show. Also you can see his palms and fingernails are clean. Why would it be true?
Right the I'm just joking defense. That's what everyone said about all of the horrible racist things that Trump said. That he was just joking. And then he looks straight into the camera and said that he never jokes.
It is clearly not a joke, in fact he is pleading the whole time how much it is not a joke.
Edit: I love also how you move the goal post from no way did he ever say it to yes of course he said it but it's a joke. Now that is disinformation.
I didn't say he didn't say it. You're making things up.
Are you seriously saying you believe he hasn't washed his hands for 10 years and doesn't believe in germs because he can't see them? What does he do when he spills sauce on his fingers? Wipe them on his shirt?
A concession to what? Yes, we agree with each other about what he said. I'm sure we also agree that water is wet. So what?
I think you should re-read each of the comments you replied to. Every one of yours has shown a major misunderstanding. It looks like you've ascribed your own preconceived words to me instead of reading my actual words.
I think the thing that I'm really driving at is my last edit, and maybe I was disingenuous in not getting there sooner, but he desperately needs a certain amount of people to believe that he doesn't wash his hands, or else he wouldn't have said that. There's a certain amount of truth in every joke after all.
So I actually kind of believe that maybe he most recently had he maybe hadn't washing his hands much, maybe, but what he really wanted to communicate was this sort of posturing thing, and that's why he can't actually like have a segment on the show where he talks about how of course he washes his hands, and why you can't Google anywhere finding him saying such a thing like of course I would wash my hands. Mark my words he will never ever claim to actually wash his hands. Even if he does. It isn't a joke, it's a specifically crafted message.
So when I'm saying that I believe that he doesn't wash his hands, it is literally because that is what he is saying. So yes I agree to your incredulity that no I don't really believe that, because it probably shouldn't be true, but I do believe strongly that he really does want everyone to believe it to be true, and that it wasn't a joke.
But now it is sort of in this liminal space, where he can laugh at the liberals because they didn't get the joke, the hypermasculine people can believe that it's true and that this person really knows what they believe that washing your hands is something that only pussies do, and then the run of the mill conservatives can now also laugh at the liberals for not getting the apparently obvious joke.
This is a pattern that holds with many conservative things, and I see that you're in this last group.
Have you considered that maybe the North American right is just that bad. Reality doesn't magically shift so that it always exists in the exact center of the North American political spectrum
I wouldn't say they are just as bad. They are also bad but they're bad in a very different way. The far right effectively has decided that objective reality doesn't exist at all. The truth is whatever they say it is and they will manufacture data as necessary. The far left on the other hand believes in data but is constrained by their inherent need to reduce every single problem to a combination of race, sex, or class, no matter how multi-faceted / complex the problems actually are. They start from the conclusion and work back to make the data fit. Where the far left and far right overlap is that they are both virulently populist, they both demonize their opponents, and they both believe in the absolute moral purity of their cause.
As an American, I'd say one side is always swept up in a religious fervor and the other is strung out on drugs. They switch roles every twenty years or so. The one doing drugs allows humor and the religious one doesn't.
They're going to switch again within the next two years, by my estimate. It'll be big, traditionalist sects (Catholic, Mormon, etc) on the right and cannabis on the left.
This the result of the two party systems. Bi-paetisan compromise is rare, and even then is often backdoored with legislation not actually discussed.
This leads to the two parties only ever being in an adversarial relationship.
In other systems, sometime you get to make a majority government with other parties. This differi means that in mutti-party systems the "party line" is "these guys are ok, and reasonable" every once in a while.
Not so in the two party system, where the winner-takes-all perpetual adversarial relationship generates a constant steam of "the others suck, are dumb, evil and want to destroy the country"
Also watching from a distance, what’re you talking about? The American right media moguls have fucked up Australian politicsalong with it, and no leftist moguls can claim the same.
One of these sides has literal, actual Nazis trying their level best to destroy democracy, supporting and protecting people who are murdering people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and others who don't fit into their fascist ideology, and remove most of the legal rights women have gained over the past century+.
The other side has...politicians who are too beholden to corporations to fight as hard as they should for progressive policies.
If you genuinely think that the American left is just as bad as the American right, then either you really haven't been paying attention, or...I guess you think the Nazis had a point or something?
I do. But it’s 2021. If I listed out a ton of problems on the left I’ll get a bunch of people on the left screaming “racist” and “nazi”, etc. Can’t have debates and arguments anymore.
If there's a root cause to the misinformation problem, maybe it's a general growing disrespect for the expression of confidence levels.
Stating speculation as fact. Ignoring that an idea is stated as speculation, and trashing their entire reputation for it. Getting excited for a result with only p ~ 0.05, and banding it about as known truth. Expressing an idea as something "everybody knows" but only being backed up by 2 exaggerated anecdotes from their friends. Degrading someone for carefully stating an idea so as to not be interpreted as saying something stronger than is reasonable to conclude. Etc etc etc
It's like nobody cares about the truth unless it's been exaggerated to a gross extreme. Maybe it's like a sensory adaptation caused by constant information overload. We've reached the limits of how much information humans can integrate, so we ignore everything below some significance threshold, so statements with a clearly stated but "mediocre" confidence level are either ignored entirely or forced to an unjustified strength just so they can be considered at all (with the predictable concequence of being treated as a liar if it turns out to be a mistake).
There are really bad ideas in this article. These systems won't be used to target obviously wrong information. It'll be used to target borderline true information that turns out to be right in hindsight. What they are suggesting at the end of this is a system that will be co-opted by groups like tobacco companies to suppress the truth.
People who want "all social media sites ... employing teams to fight active misinformation and disinformation" are much more dangerous than misinformation. They are creating systematic weak points for the truth to be suppressed, and relying on the fact that surely there are now powerful or motivated bad actors who will corrupt their beautiful but delicate system!
I spent 2020 watching people with PHDs in medical fields tying themselves in knots to avoid being censored by YouTube - and saying things that turned out to be true. I'd bet not a single person working for the censors had a PHD. There is madness somewhere here.