Facebook Data Reveal the Devastating Real-World Harms Caused By the Spread of Misinformation (theconversation.com) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: Twenty-one years after Facebook's launch, Australia's top 25 news outlets now have a combined 27.6 million followers on the platform. They rely on Facebook's reach more than ever, posting far more stories there than in the past. With access to Meta's Content Library (Meta is the owner of Facebook), our big data study analysed more than three million posts from 25 Australian news publishers. We wanted to understand how content is distributed, how audiences engage with news topics, and the nature of misinformation spread. The study enabled us to track de-identified Facebook comments and take a closer look at examples of how misinformation spreads. These included cases about election integrity, the environment (floods) and health misinformation such as hydroxychloroquine promotion during the COVID pandemic. The data reveal misinformation's real-world impact: it isn't just a digital issue, it's linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm. [...]
Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public. Social media and mainstream media also play an important role in limiting the circulation of misinformation. As Australians increasingly rely on social media for news, mainstream media can provide credible information and counter misinformation through their online story posts. Digital platforms can also curb algorithmic spread and remove dangerous content that leads to real-world harms. The study offers evidence of a change over time in audiences' news consumption patterns. Whether this is due to news avoidance or changes in algorithmic promotion is unclear. But it is clear that from 2016 to 2024, online audiences increasingly engaged with arts, lifestyle and celebrity news over politics, leading media outlets to prioritize posting stories that entertain rather than inform. This shift may pose a challenge to mitigating misinformation with hard news facts. Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.
Our study has lessons for public figures and institutions. They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation, as their misleading statements are quickly amplified by the public. Social media and mainstream media also play an important role in limiting the circulation of misinformation. As Australians increasingly rely on social media for news, mainstream media can provide credible information and counter misinformation through their online story posts. Digital platforms can also curb algorithmic spread and remove dangerous content that leads to real-world harms. The study offers evidence of a change over time in audiences' news consumption patterns. Whether this is due to news avoidance or changes in algorithmic promotion is unclear. But it is clear that from 2016 to 2024, online audiences increasingly engaged with arts, lifestyle and celebrity news over politics, leading media outlets to prioritize posting stories that entertain rather than inform. This shift may pose a challenge to mitigating misinformation with hard news facts. Finally, the study shows that fact-checking, while valuable, is not a silver bullet. Combating misinformation requires a multi-pronged approach, including counter-messaging by trusted civic leaders, media and digital literacy campaigns, and public restraint in sharing unverified content.
'trusted civic leaders'? (Score:2, Informative)
What 'trusted civic leaders'?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is the problem; we don't believe what our leaders say.
It was fascinating at my church when Covid started: the highly respected medical student was asked the questions which were being posed on the media. He came up with the same answers; obviously his answers were more acceptable than what the talking heads on the TV were saying.
And then, later, we discovered that the WHO had been spreading misinformation about aerial transmission.
Re:'trusted civic leaders'? (Score:4, Informative)
What 'trusted civic leaders'?
The ones that the writers of the piece liked.
There's a continuing narrative that we hate journalists because of "malign influence" or some bullshit. That people are rubes, easily manipulated, and if political leaders would just take charge and prevent the "wrong" media, people would love journalists, politicians, etc. But people came by their distrust honestly. For much of my adult life, journalists have talked down to their audience (when it was a mass audience, anyway, before it fractured into pieces). I still remember Peter Jennings, in 1994, sourly lecturing viewers on how they voted the wrong way. The tone was very much Just what do you people think you're doing, anyway?.
Trust in these institutions is gone, and probably will never return in my lifetime. And it's entirely the fault of the people in those institutions. No one else.
Re: (Score:2)
They mean the people that were traditionally trusted. Political leaders, religious leaders, celebrity scientists, newsreaders, that sort of thing.
Yes they did lie or make mistakes, and yes not everyone trusted them. But many people would watch the evening news and if their country's leader came on and told them something, or a famous doctor said something, many of them would trust it.
Now we have the other extreme were much of the population automatically assumes that anything people like that say is a lie a
Is our democracy doomed? (Score:2)
A European politician was quoted recently as saying: 'We know what we need to do. What we don't know is how to do it and still get re-elected.'
For decades politicians have got elected by telling lies. Because the range of politicians being elected were acceptable to the elites, there wasn't a problem. Then Trump comes along and mobilises - with lies - the population to demand change that the elites aren't comfortable with, and they've got all sulky; Clinton's 'deplorables' comment captures the real attitude
Re: (Score:3)
And then, later, we discovered that the WHO had been spreading misinformation about aerial transmission...
That's an example of COVID misinformation.
The WHO used the advice available to it from experts at the time. The WHO is a very conservative institution, in terms of only giving advice when there is a solid body of evidence to back it up, and wide consensus.
So they started by giving the standard advice for respiratory diseases that had proven to be true and effective before. And it wasn't exactly untrue for COVID, it just got refined as understanding of the disease improved. Surgical masks did work to reduce
WHO admitted its mistake (Score:2)
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
and
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
here's an attempt to explain the mistake
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
Re: (Score:2)
A mistake is not a lie. And your first link has a quote where she says "But at the same time, we were not forcefully saying: âThis is an airborne virus.â(TM) I regret that we didnâ(TM)t do this much, much earlier."
A mistake is not a lie (Score:2)
True, of course, but not relevant to this debate as the issue is about TRUST and the WHO's mistake means that it has, like a politician who deliberately lies, shown itself to be untrustworthy. THIS IS A DISASTER, of course, as it allows the deluded to ignore what the WHO says.
The 'logic' appears to be:
I don't want to believe this inconvenient truth
A politician agrees with me
The media point to 'trusted organisations' who tell me it's true
The politician points to when the 'trusted organisations' got it wrong
I
Re: (Score:2)
It's only a disaster if you think that making a minor and largely inconsequential mistake in a high pressure situation where the supply of solid information is limited makes them "untrustworthy". Given they have not made mistakes with 99% of the advice they give, you would be pretty stupid to deliberately do the opposite of everything they suggest.
Ironic... (Score:2)
Facebook reporting on the danger of misinformation is like cancer reporting on the threat from cancer...
Gatekeeping (Score:5, Insightful)
What we're talking about here is gatekeeping. Back a few decades ago, gatekeeping was the standard way things were done in the media simply because the technology created the gates: there were only so many channels, and setting up a channel was expensive. The FCC *did* regulate what you could say on broadcast TV (the 7 dirty words) and even instituted a "fairness doctrine" that forced channels to give equal airtime to both sides. Coupled with strong journalism ethics, only stories that were vetted by fact checking could even make it on the news, and you would hear the opposing point of view simply by watching the same channel.
There were pros and cons of this system. It did prevent the spread of misinformation, but it also suppressed minority viewpoints. Flat earthers simply didn't have a platform back then, and were just the butt of jokes, but the same could be said of gay people.
When the internet first arrived, it was still full of gatekeeping. Only people who were technologically savvy could setup a website or even a blog, so the content online during the web 1.0 phase tended to be more enlightened than what you see now. I was there. There was a lot of optimism in the 90's that worldwide access to the internet was going to lift humanity out of ignorance.
Web 2.0, or social media as we call it now, destroyed that dream by handing everyone a megaphone. Yes, it destroyed all the gates and the fences along with it. It gave access to groups who didn't have access before (a good example is the Arab Spring protests). But it flooded us all with clickbait and content designed to make us angry, suspend rational thought, and share it. It also didn't take long for governments to realize the opportunity and flood social media with one-sided narratives they wanted shared widely, which traditional media never would have published.
Social media has a fundamental problem: it spreads misinformation much more easily than evidence-based facts.
Gatekeeping has a fundamental problem: we don't trust the gatekeepers. But it drastically reduces misinformation spread.
But it's not like we can put the genie back in the bottle. We've democratized content generation. Anyone can make a youtube or facebook video from their phone, and it can spread far and wide long before it can be fact checked. And once it's fact checked, the truth doesn't have the sharing power of the original narrative.
Would introducing gatekeepers to social media fix the problem? I don't think so. It's a problem of scale. There's just too much content to fact check. And the only ones who could do it at scale are the social media platforms themselves and only with automated solutions, which aren't going to be very accurate. Worse, we don't want to give social media companies the power to be the arbiters of truth. At least under the old system, it was small enough that the arbiters of truth were a profession of journalists with codes of ethics, and journalism awards, and a reasonably independent news room that was separate from the editorial office.
So we're stuck with this. The future is a no holds barred competition of opinion manipulation. The tools that support this reality (the internet and web 2.0) are now augmented by even more powerful mass content generation in the form of generative AI. The worst part is, those of us who even want to fix it are in the minority. It's just too powerful of a tool, and both sides find it too valuable to give up.
And it doesn't really matter if you work hard to be a critical thinker, and you're suspicious of all new information. Even if you do, you're in the minority, and you're at the mercy of a majority that's happy to swallow whatever new narrative fires them up. So all you can do is sit quietly, hoping the eye of Sauron doesn't suddenly turn on you, or whatever group you happen to identify with.
Re: (Score:3)
It was worse. Gay people didn't just lack a voice, they were actively demonized by the TV media of the day.
I don't think it's even a lack of trust in gatekeepers exactly, it's more that people have just decided they can believe their preferred version of reality is true. That gives them great licence to do whatever they like, because it can never be stupid or outright evil in their imaginary world.
Re: Gatekeeping (Score:2)
I was a technology analyst for a small securities firm for a few years. I met with small tech businesses looking for financing. It was interesting work, but I wasn't battle hardened yet. I heard a lot of big talk. One day I asked my boss, the guy who takes you into a public stock market listing, "how do you know what makes sense?"
He said, "if it doesn't make sense to
Re: (Score:2)
The venn diagram between "public news source" and "high quality, vetted, transparent and largely unbiased" is approaching zero. NPR and BBC are still arguably good news sources, although conservatives will point out that they lean decidedly left while claiming to be center. I wouldn't bet much on th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I like the BBC a lot. Most of their articles that aren't in the culture section are pretty good about just giving you the facts without injecting all the bullshit. Once you get over to the cultural section of the BBC, it's definitely left leaning.
I have not really looked into NPR so much as every time the algo points me to their site, they want me to "listen" to an audio file. I'd much prefer to read my news. Since I haven't really explored their website, maybe I'm just missing the transcripts or the writte
Re: (Score:2)
Social media has a fundamental problem: it spreads misinformation much more easily than evidence-based facts.
Gatekeeping has a fundamental problem: we don't trust the gatekeepers. But it drastically reduces misinformation spread.
The only nit to pick here is that while gatekeepers might reduce misinformation spread, it is more about who's paying the gatekeepers and how misinformation is defined. It's more accurate to say that gatekeepers drastically reduce misinformation spread based on how misinformation is defined for them by their bosses, whether those bosses be a government entity, an interested corporation, or some other special interest group.
Re: (Score:2)
Web 2.0, or social media as we call it now, destroyed that dream by handing everyone a megaphone.
But it did not do that. Yes, anyone can post, but not anyone can have their content seen. If it doesn't meet the approval of the platform's owners, statistically nobody sees it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They may very well put the genie back in the bottle when they eventually kill 230. Then, user generated content will die overnight because the liability for that content will make it unprofitable.
Sure, the dark web exist and you could always hang out there, but the public Internet will eventually be locked down and for commercial and government use only. I don't like it but I'd be shocked if it doesn't eventually happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We sort of had to take them at their word though. How else were you going to verify what was actually happening thousands of miles away? Unless you had a friend there that saw what happened, you are at the mercy of the "news".
I don't suppose there is a perfect solution for this.
it's going to be a hard thing to limit (Score:3)
The classic counter-argument is you can't falsely cry Fire! in a crowded theatre. It's not freedom of speech, it's intentionally causing public harm. (whether or not you benefit from the outcome, but that just makes it all the more deplorable if you do)
Politicians have always been keen to intertwine "freedom of speech" with "freedom from consequences". They're afraid of laws that could prevent them from lying when they want to, which for a politician, can be quite often. So they'll wrap Freedom from Consequences in a Freedom of Speech blanket to gather support and protect their interests.
Unfortunately, lately we've had a larger than average number of powerful politicians shoveling misinformation like it's snow in Chicago, while attacking the press for calling them out on their lies. They don't want to put controls on misinformation because they're benefiting from it. And part of that is keeping their voter base entertained, so it's a problem of positive feedback. More misinformation gets them more votes, and more votes keeps them in office, to block laws and spread more misinformation.
It's gotten to the point where the politicians don't care if they're caught red-handed in lies. They just complain about the press and public being being 'woke' and how unfair it is that they're getting 'canceled'. Somehow ends up getting them more support instead of less.
I'd love to be a part of fixing this, but I just don't see how to break the cycle. I've got a vote but it's not helping, and it's deeply frustrating!
Re: (Score:2)
Freedom of Speech, at least in the way it's enshrined in the US Constitution is merely stating that the government cannot punish you for your words. You won't be imprisoned for your speech.
Corporations and individual people don't have to abide by that restriction placed on the government. We have the right to associate with who we want and if someone is busy spouting a bunch of stuff we disagree with, we don't have to associate with them. That's why your work can fire you if you are constantly expressing sp
Manstream media is dead (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When people get their "News" from Rachael Maddow or Tucker Carlson, they aren't getting news, they are getting political opinions about current events. Huge difference, but so many people don't seem to grasp that anymore. Instead of news, we have entertainment that caters to different ideologies.
We're doomed (Score:2)
"They, especially politicians, must lead in curbing misinformation..."
Good luck with that.
Consequences (Score:2)
Skimming the comments... (Score:2)
Gee, haven't you fascists swalled enough horse dewormer?
And then there's censorship... such as Sinclair REFUSING TO SHOW Jimmy Kimmel. You don't want to call that censorship?
Breaking News (Score:2)
People are stupid.
More at 11.
The proper counter (Score:2)
The proper counter to misinformation is true information, along with the tools to tell them apart objectively (experiments I can perform to tell which is true and which is false, without depending on any authority figures).
Censorship is not the solution, censorship is the problem. I have to trust not only the censor's motive, but also the censor's competence. I can't objectively verify either of them.
Re:Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of what that administration does is right out of the fascist playbook. Deny it all you want, but it doesn't change what it is.
The real point here is that Facebook is the greatest gift to people like Putin ever created. We handed him one of the most powerful weapons imaginable. A weapon designed to destroy us by targeting our desire for freedom of expression, but be relatively easy for a dictator like him to block. Much of the damage done by our own citizens. Impossible to retaliate against in an effective manner.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Russians have been weaponizing our openness and reverence for free speech since the birth of the USSR. That a former KGB agent would continue to do so shouldn't be a surprise. Facebook just offers another avenue for our enemies to use our own principles against us. But we can take it! We are big enough and strong enough to shrug that off and keep going w
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Russian influence helped give us Brexit by a very narrow margin, and it may have destroyed the UK in the long run. It's certainly devastated our economy, costing us at least 4% of GDP, forever. The union may break up.
I'm not sure we can survive with our ideals intact. Far right ideology is on the rise and has become mainstream again. Seems like a lot of those ideals have already gone out the window.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Russian influence helped give us Brexit by a very narrow margin
Arrogance gave you Brexit. Your side wouldn't listen to voters, and you and the entire political class that you align yourself with called them oafs, and fools, and generally discounted their concerns and told them to know their place. THAT got you Brexit. And that fact that you still haven't learned this... that you still can't admit defeat, that you still look down on "them" as dirty, unwashed masses that should conform to their betters' wishes, that you continue to blame your loss on sinister outside for
Re: (Score:2)
Their concerns were listened to, they just ignored the advice. For example, some of them wanted less immigration. Immigration is now much higher. They were warned that would happen. If they were too bloody minded to accept it, that's nobody's fault but their own.
I've heard some wanted to stick it to the establishment, and by voting for Brexit they entrenched the establishment's power. Again, warned and ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
Arrogance gave you Brexit. Your side wouldn't listen to voters, and you and the entire political class that you align yourself with called them oafs, and fools, and generally discounted their concerns and told them to know their place. THAT got you Brexit.
So in other words a bunch of people said shooting yourself in the foot was a bad idea but you knew better and proceeded to shoot yourself in the foot. Now the argument is I made you shoot yourself in the foot?
Re:Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Informative)
If the admin doesn't want to be called fascists they can stop acting like fascists.
Fascism isn't a form of governance, it's a method of radicalization and a process of politics. By pretty much any academic definition whether Umberto Ecco's and Robert Griffith, that's what this admin is acting like:
These include a war on perceived national weakness, disunity and “decadence”, uniformed paramilitarism, the belief in a single party and charismatic leader, an emphasis on national homogeneity that demands the end of political and cultural pluralism, the persecution of “alien” ideologies and beliefs, and the pursuit of a nebulous “national rebirth” (“palingenesis”). The goal of total societal renewal may well (though not necessarily) embrace territorial or imperialist expansion, and the suppression, marginalization, “ethnic cleansing” or physical extermination of outgroups. However, in interwar Europe it did demand the social engineering of consensus through propaganda, censorship, and nation-wide “re-education” of the masses to produce “new national human beings” (“New Men”), as well as experiments with a new form of centralized (though not necessarily corporatist) economy, and forced cultural cleansing and artistic renaissance.
https://www.politika.io/en/not... [politika.io]
Re: (Score:3)
I gave you a definition from a very respected academic source and pointed you to another one (If you did research you absolutely must have come across Ur-Fascism) so let's take his points of how it doesn't apply to this admin.
https://www.openculture.com/20... [openculture.com]
And if you did your research you should have easily come across the reasons socialism was in the name: The Nazis wages war against both the Marxists, KPD and liberals, SPD. Hitler was no fan of capitalism either and socialism did not have the cold war
Re: (Score:2)
I clicked your link. If I go by that, America has been fascist for DECADES and which ever party was in charge mattered not. I think a more correct term really would be authoritarianism. That's dictation from a top leader and the economic system doesn't really matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Do I have to say it again? Fascism isn't a form of government or organizing an economy.
Sure we can draw some lines between every admin and some of those points but with this admin it's every single one of them and far more compelling. Scales exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure but no party post WWII is going to identify as fascist so self ID for political parties is as worthless as tits on a bull so who cares what a party or movement calls itself, we can and should judge by their actions.
Here for the Trump admin term 2 their actions to me clearly put them in fascism camp. Thanks to Stephen Millers little speech I can easily say their words are as well.
Re: (Score:2)
We are discussing right now but at a certain point of fascism is the apt descriptor why wouldn't we use it? Hurt feelings?
Do you disagree the admin is fascist? That's what I am getting at so that's putlr discussion of facts
Re: (Score:2)
All Nazi's are fascists but not all fascists are Nazis. I would not call the Trump admin Nazi's because they lack certain necessary elements, in particular the antisemitism. You should know that if you are coming at this with some degree of research.
Not all fascism has to result in genocide either (but it often ends in war, usually losing a war because fascists are incompetent by nature ).
Again, we circle back to my original point. If certain people are offended by being called fascist they should stop
Re: (Score:2)
Well that cuts both ways so you know, I agree but at the same time I would probably point to Republicans for an apology for calling every Democrat my entire life socialist or communist, from Clinton to Pelosi to Obama to Biden and everyone in-between. Obama was supposed to an actual communist and conservatives commentators literally still call him a socialist president who gravely wounded the nation and he was a milquetoast moderate.
I mean there a number of occasions of Trump calling Harris a, and I quote,
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:2)
I'd like to point out, they say history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
So The King may not be anti Semitic like the Nazis were, but how far a stretch is it to round up Latino fruit pickers by masked storm troopers and put them into camps before deporting them, to comparing that to concentration camps?
Close enough that hand waving doesn't make any difference.
Re: (Score:2)
That's why I have no qualms about calling Trump fascist because it's reality unless there is a better descriptor I am missing but they are checking all the boxes. "Stupid fascism" maybe, kakistocracy also works.
Would I concern troll when people call him a Nazi? Not at all because he's the insult President, his whole schtick is name calling and why I find all the Republican pearl clutching so disgusting.
Re: (Score:2)
"That is what fascists do. They silence their critiques and demonize them all to solidify their own power."
"I hate my enemies"
Trump is using the DOJ to go after his political enemies
Trump is engaged in a shadow war with Venezuela
Trump pardoned people who commited political violence on his behalf
Trump is sending military into states against the wishes of the governors.
Trump fired Jack Smith instead of facing his charges in court.
Everything Jan6. Fake elector plot, trying to steal the election, had his suppo
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:3)
You don't have to wonder what's in some abstract fascist playbooks, you can just go read them. Everything is accessible in these days.
From what I've seen, they contain a hell of a lot of "they're exploiting our kindness", "They're exploiting our democracy", "they're exploiting our devotion to fairness" etc. "They're exploiting our free speech" seems like it fits right in.
Re: (Score:3)
In the past during Trump's first term I was even on the side of "don't call them fascist" worried about having "TDS" and such but now, after the 2020 election and this term yeah, mea culpa on my part, the resist libs were right in 2016, they are fascist so let's not be afraid to call them that.
Part of their strategy even is this whole "It's gauche and uncivil to describe our beliefs accurately"
Re: (Score:2)
i surmise you're from the uk, where recently a handful septagenaries have been jailed facing a trial that could imprison them for years (or whatever they have left), because they were labelled terrorists for holding placards asking for the end of the genocide in gaza in a peaceful demonstration. just to get this straight: is that putin's fault too?
amimojo, i value your opinions a lot, really, precisely for that let me say this straight to your virtual face: your country and society are going to shit, and yo
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that British society is going to shit, especially in England. Putin deserves some of the blame, but yes, much of it is down to people like Nigel Farage.
The various governments take some of the blame too, but keep in mind they didn't always have a choice. For example, some people wanted immigration to come down so bizarrely voted for Brexit, even though it was clearly going to make immigration go up. And sure enough, that's what happened. Now the government has an impossible choice. Slash immigration
Re: (Score:2)
Fascism because some national level celebrity with mega corp backing got pulled from the public airwaves for a few nights, when the news came out we'd be tampering with organic conversations,
Um, the study is about Australia, I doubt they have much interest in following what happened with the Kimmel show. And free speech - especially speech the right doesn't like - has been strongly under attack since the Trump administration took office, so if you waited for the 'perfect' time to share the results of the study, to some magical time when free speech wasn't under assault, you'd never release the study.
Further, to pretend that there's something "organic" about the way the social media algorithms
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:2)
Algorithmic amplification is at the core of what makes social media destructive to society.
Amplification != freezepeach
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Informative)
I came here to say the same thing. Governments, politicians and large institutions are the worst offenders when it comes to censorship, this is just their latest attempt to make censorship sound needed and important.
I came here to point out that Japan has 124 million inhabitants, they lost 57,262 people to COID. Flordia has a population of 23.37 million, they lost 51,240 people to COVID. Florida could have reduced that death toll to ~9000 (probably even less because their population density is lower than Japan's) if they hadn't listened to anti-vaxxers, Ivermectin preachers and other quacks, snake oil salesmen and conspiracy theory peddlers. The death toll Florida suffered is quantifiable harm done by deliberately disseminated misinformation by psychopaths who think their little grift is worth more than a human life. Freedom of speech is a laudable ideal but your freedom of speech ends when human beings are dying because of what you are speaking about and I am not going to cry any rivers over the state intervening by muzzling quacks, snake oil salesmen and conspiracy theory peddlers if it saves lives.
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
i would argue that freedom of speech can only contribute to spread misinformation if you have a big enough population lacking enough critical thinking skills, attention spans and overal culture. all those could be addressed with education and open discussion.
i'd rather make an effort in the always difficult and long term task of education and open, honest discussion than in censoring free speech. alas, i think i find myself in a minority here, and i see no inclination whatsoever in that direction in any current government, actually not even those labelling themselves as democratic. quite the opposite. the reasons should be quite obvious.
this is not to exonerate facebook, they profit from general ignorance and are more likely than not in bed with power circles for whom that misinformation is convenient and desirable. however, censoring facebook has not improved and will not improve matters one iota. there is no real solution to this other than training people in exhibiting some discerning skills and enforcing transparency, which is very hard and has institutional action working against. so, there's no practical solution, and welcome to the machine.
Re: (Score:2)
i would argue that freedom of speech can only contribute to spread misinformation if you have a big enough population lacking enough critical thinking skills, attention spans and overal culture.
So the US then? And quite a few other countries as well.
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom of speech is a laudable ideal but your freedom of speech ends when human beings are dying because of what you are speaking about
More people die in the aggregate when censorship is status quo. You start by censoring things you feel are absolutely justified because, allegedly, those ideas "cost lives." But then someone comes along with different ideas as to what is justified. Maybe they are threatened by ideas that challenge their power status. Soon enough science, research, innovation, investigative journalism .. .things that objectively improve people's lives and save many more lives than a virus has ever taken are silenced out of fear of repercussions for saying the wrong thing.
Freedom of speech is not a "laudable ideal". It is a fundamental human right that exists because reason is our primary tool of survival as human beings. But like with everything, there is good and bad to be found. There are bad actors out there who will lie and cheat and steal. The solution is not to prevent people from being able to share information, no matter how justified you feel in doing so. The solution is to counter bad ideas and lies with better ideas and truths. Individuals will make their own individual choices and face the consequences accordingly. Reality always wins.
Re: (Score:2)
Reality? lol, not from American politicians. One side wants to use the Bible as a justification for law and the other side can't tell you what a woman is. Seems like neither side has much grasps on reality.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the rest of your post beyond the "reality" part. You are 100% correct.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny enough, you left out a few other factors. Mainly that the Japanese are far healthier on average than the average Floridian (just look up rates on obesity, heart disease, etc.) Of course, you would not bring that up because people didn't really die from covid itself, but instead comorbidities that would also factor in if they caught any other similar disease.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you hate Darwinism? It's just working as nature intended it to.
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody knows how to even quantify the number of lives lost, harm due to increased mental illness, and many other impacts of listen to the official advice either.
Meanwhile the officials literally tried to silence anyone who tried.
I am not crying any rivers about government boot lickers like you losing elections either.
Speech did not kill anyone of those people. Making a choice to listing to some quack on facebook did, and yes the price of freedom has always been and will always been that some people will take that freedom and chose to ignore good advice like "aim away from face" in favor of "just use your teeth its quicker"
That is just humans.
Bullcrap! You count the COVID dead in Japan, count the COVID dead in Florida, compare the population sizes, population densities and observe that the Japanese don't take medical advice from qacks, snake oil salesmen and conspiracy theory peddlers, Floridans do take medical advice from quacks, snake oil salesmen and conspiracy theory peddlers and then compare the death tolls of those that got vaccinated and followed pandemic protocol to the death-toll among those who didn't. There is no room for 'interpretation' on the basis of 'deeply held beliefs' here, misinformation related to COVID that was deliberately disseminated by quacks, snake oil salesmen and conspiracy theory peddlers killed tens of thousands of Americans completely needlessly.
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
California's population in 2023 was 39 million and had ~100,000 deaths attributed to COVID and California had some of the strictest COVID policies.
What's your point?
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Informative)
California's population in 2023 was 39 million and had ~100,000 deaths attributed to COVID and California had some of the strictest COVID policies.
What's your point?
That California was more diligent in tracking covid deaths while Florida deliberately went out of its way to hide its numbers [tampabay.com].
Re: (Score:2)
That California was more diligent in tracking covid deaths while Florida deliberately went out of its way to hide its numbers [tampabay.com].
And yet, you quote Florida's numbers? Which is it?
Re: (Score:3)
That California was more diligent in tracking covid deaths while Florida deliberately went out of its way to hide its numbers [tampabay.com].
And yet, you quote Florida's numbers? Which is it?
He didn't quote Florida numbers I did, and you do realize that if Florida succeeded in massively under reporting their COVID deaths so as not to embarrass DeathSantis their death toll is way north of 50 k which makes the carnage in Florida way, way worse than I said it was. That being said Florida's deaths per 100k were 404 people while that of California was 256 per 100k so whatever California did they must have done something right Vermont did even better than both with only 149 deaths per 100k and so did
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no...
> Flordia has a population of 23.37 million, they lost 51,240 people to COVID.
That's 219.9 deaths per 100k
> California's population in 2023 was 39 million and had ~100,000 deaths attributed to COVID
That's 256 deaths per 100k
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the GP was implying that Florida was uniquely bad at protecting against COVID.
Japan's numbers would have been a lot lower if they had not decided to go ahead with the Olympics.
Re: (Score:2)
California's population in 2023 was 39 million and had ~100,000 deaths attributed to COVID and California had some of the strictest COVID policies.
What's your point?
Stupidity is everywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
California's population in 2023 was 39 million and had ~100,000 deaths attributed to COVID and California had some of the strictest COVID policies.
What's your point?
I believe the point was an international comparison and you're turning it into a state comparison. Like there's nothing we could have done, because California did it all. That's bullshit.
California, Texas, New York and Flordia didn't do anything meaningfully different. There is no enforcement mechanisms for any of the "strict" stuff. Every wave of COVID in the US was plainly obvious. Reports of deaths reach the news, people got scared and self isolated. They stop hearing about it, stop isolating, mission ac
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine the countries that did better with covid also have a population that trust their government a lot more. A significantly amount of Americans do not trust their government. It's not even a red or blue thing. Each side just trust different parts of the government to different degrees. Your average Republican will be more supportive of police but less trusting of EPA or DOE. Democrats don't seem to have much trust in police or immigration.
It didn't help that during covid you had team blue protesting a
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Speech did not kill anyone of those people.
It also never ceases to amaze me how the supposed defenders of free speech appear to do their utmost to make speech seem as worthless as possible. With a gun, you can kill a few people before you are stopped. With speech you can foment a revolution, and may never be stopped.
Liberty or death...
"To arms, to arms!" And all that. Or do you think Patrick Henry had nothing to do with the British soldiers being killed and the crown being ejected?
Re: (Score:2)
We'll remove a toy from the market because it killed a total of three kids and nobody complains, but we are powerless to do anything about misinformation that has killed thousands.
Lawn darts are a weapon of war (Score:3)
We'll remove a toy from the market because it killed a total of three kids and nobody complains
Lawn darts are a weapon of war.
"Plumbatae or martiobarbuli were lead-weighted throwing darts carried by infantrymen in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They were used to inflict damage on enemies at a distance before engaging in close combat. Roman soldiers in some legions carried plumbatae inside their shields, which allowed them to have ranged weapons similar to arrows, according to Vegetius in his 4th-century military treatise De re militari."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Speech did not kill anyone of those people.
Yep, that's why banning books is wrong.
That's why Fox News can blame anyone and demand their listeners 'fix' the people they don't like. It's why MSNBC and CNN can get their facts from Twitter. It's why teachers can call a child "fat" or "slut", everyday. It's why absolute strangers can phone you with the news they've kidnapped your loved ones and you pay a ransom within 5 minutes or they're stabbed.
You'll probably complain that the last one is a crime but it's just speech: If you give the caller mo
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't even know who Charlie Kirk was until he was dead. I'll take the dangers of free speech over censorship any day, thank you.
This whole free speech business lately has been rather amusing since Democrats are the ones that push "hate speech" laws. So clearly censorship is fine, so long as it's their idea.
I'm just glad people in both parties have pushed back on Trump for pressuring Bob Iger. Now maybe if he had some conviction that wasn't just about the almighty dollar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To me the initial reaction in a situation like covid should be an overreaction since we couldn't determine the appropriate reaction at that point. It's really easy to forget just how little information we had. It had overwhelmed medical facilities and nobody had any real information yet about the spread to determine what was safe and what wasn't.
To me the initial reaction is to follow the science, not the politics. As many European nations did and had better outcomes with far less drama and disruption. Here in the US we followed the politics, both in red and blue states. It just turned out that reality matched the red state's less panicky approach.
Re: (Score:2)
Conservatives do tend to skew older and older people were significantly more likely to die of covid then a young person. Go pull the stats. The vast majority of deaths were for people over 60. By HUGE margins.
Almost no one under 20 died. The government published all this information.
The best advice would of been to isolate the old people from the rest of us, as they were the ones dying, not the young.
Re: (Score:2)
For all the stupidity on both sides, ie Gov Newsome in California literally said the science indicated you should pull up you mask while chewing and only lower it to put food in your mouth.
When it comes to reducing your ability to spread COVID to others, epidemiologically speaking, he wasn't wrong.
The problem was that he also had a large gathering at his house at the peak of the pandemic. Rules for thee, but not for me.
Want to do a left wing protest march, no covid restrictions for you.
And yet those groups tended to practice social distancing, wore masks, etc. Some photographers used perspective to make it look like there were dense crowds, but shots taken from other angles revealed that this was not really the case.
For all the stupidity on both sides, Red did better than Blue with Covid. Blue overreacted.
For all the stupidity on both sides, red
Re: (Score:2)
For all the stupidity on both sides, ie Gov Newsome in California literally said the science indicated you should pull up you mask while chewing and only lower it to put food in your mouth.
When it comes to reducing your ability to spread COVID to others, epidemiologically speaking, he wasn't wrong.
Doctors, scientists, also consider what people will realistically do. What they can be realistically expected to comply with. Asking for too much will not yield positive results.
Want to do a left wing protest march, no covid restrictions for you.
And yet those groups tended to practice social distancing, wore masks, etc.
Very hit and miss on that. And no blue politician cared.
Blue states did not overreact.
Absolutely false. The business and school closers, mandatory vexing for the young and healthy.
Red states didn't take it seriously, and a lot of people died as a result.
Read the small print on your studies, its was more about socioeconomic factors than politics.
The only place where blue states did badly was New York, and that's because they got hit first, before anybody knew how to deal with it.
Total BS. They got hit harder due to the mismanagement of Gov Cuomo who through his policie
Re: (Score:2)
When it comes to reducing your ability to spread COVID to others, epidemiologically speaking, he wasn't wrong.
Doctors, scientists, also consider what people will realistically do. What they can be realistically expected to comply with. Asking for too much will not yield positive results.
And that's why they should have waited to open dine-in restaurants until they could do so without making unreasonable demands.
Want to do a left wing protest march, no covid restrictions for you.
And yet those groups tended to practice social distancing, wore masks, etc.
Very hit and miss on that. And no blue politician cared.
The thing is, limits on political speech are really problematic in general. Even if they cared, they wouldn't dare say it.
Blue states did not overreact.
Absolutely false. The business and school closers, mandatory vexing for the young and healthy.
They did not overreact. The problem was that we weren't prepared for the fallout. If it happened today, given how much better delivery services have gotten, it would not have been a big deal for most businesses. Schools would still have been a problem, but no
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a catch-22. If the government takes action to halt the spread of misinformation, they are accused of censorship. But if they do nothing, they are accused of negligence. Either way, they cannot win.
In my opinion, censorship is the greater evil. Therefore, the government should allow the spread of misinformation but should counter it with educational campaigns that spread good information. It is true that some people will buy into the information, which is unfortunate, but the government cannot (and should not) control their minds. Attempting to block the misinformation won't change the minds of people who already believe it.
Everyone has a personal responsibility to seek out good information. Everyone should cultivate critical thinking skills in themselves, listen to information that challenges their beliefs, question information that seems a little too comforting to be true, and so on. It's a moral responsibility, because the decisions that everyone makes have an impact on everyone else, and misinformation leads to harmful decisions. Not everyone will do this, of course, because some people are just lazy. Or rotten. But even so, censorship is not the right way to influence the lazy and the rotten. The only ethical option is to encourage a proper education and make the good information as available as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the government's job to vet speech, so therefore they can't be negligent for doing nothing. I like your ideas for education and more speech to push back on falsehoods. That's the only real way forward.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Governments, politicians and large institutions are the worst offenders when it comes to censorship, this is just their latest attempt to make censorship sound needed and important.
Exactly. Free society is not the same thing as risk-free society, it is actually the opposite. Part of being free means that you are free to make foolish mistakes.
I hope most people realize that the logical conclusion of a proposition that a population cannot be trusted to decide what is true on their own leads to a logical conclusion that a population cannot be allowed to freely vote.
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:2)
> Ask the Biden administration, they did it to a few people.
Iâ(TM)m no fan of biden or the dnc, but i canâ(TM)t find any examples outside of pressure on youtube to remove covid misinformation.
Do you have some handy?
Re: Propoganda -LOL (Score:2)
Look at the intense hate for Facebook.
Facebook sucks, but not inherently more so than Google, Bloomberg, Bezos, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
What happened is that they were judged to be politically unreliable, blamed for Trump's first win (after being credited, with praise, for Obama's second win). They're still scrambling to regain establishment trust, deeply complicated by Trump being in charge.
Re:Propoganda -LOL (Score:5, Informative)
Ask the Biden administration, they did it to a few people.
Whataboutism and names please.
Is threatening to pull network's a broadcast license over hurt feelings not fascism? https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
What would you call it?
Re: (Score:2)
Is threatening to pull network's a broadcast license over hurt feelings not fascism?
I do not support censorship in any form, even in cases where networks knowingly spread lies and manufacture stories, like Russiagate [realclearwire.com] or Flynn entrapment [kuow.org] or Russian Bounties on US troops [yahoo.com], or Pee tapes [bostonherald.com], etc., etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Russiagate where the position of the Mueller report was "what evidence we do have points to collusion but the admin obstructed so much we could not get enough to put charges to it" and he recommended a charge of obstruction and where Roger Stone did communicate with a Russian Internet Research Agency operative to coordinate damaging releases on Clinton and when called to testify he defied a subpoena, told the press outright he would not testify against trump, was then charged for ignoring a subpoena and th
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. that Russia
Re: (Score:2)
None of that contradicts any of my statements of fact, none of which rely on Steele and even Durhams own report didn't contradict what Mueller found. Don't forget the investigation was opened before Steele's info was available, that was not the triggering event.
Again did Roger Stone a Trump campaign official not communicate with a Russian state operative and was pardoned for defying a subpoena? Also remember how this all started, with Trump firing Comey to let Flynn off the hook?
I'm not saying Russia coll
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying Russia collusion was real only that we'll never know because the admin obstructed the investigation
Without Steele dossier there is no probable cause to investigate. In other words, why not also investigate Trump for possible ties to Mongolia or Nicaragua?
Re:Propoganda -LOL (Score:4, Informative)
First link is from the Trump admin in 2018. Third link leads up to Fox having to pay out for their lies about compromised voting machines. Middle link seems like a collection of headlines.
So who did Biden call up and get fired?
Re: (Score:2)
Kimmel lied, what he said would have been taken by any reasonable listener as saying the assassin was a MAGA adherent.
Fox was exactly no different, but same congress people that now making a fuss over Kimmel were doing everything they could get them off the air.
yes the first like is a letter to the former trump admin from again many of those same congress persons to try to silence people.
You sir are just an TDS idiot, not worth discourse with in the future. If slashdot had a kill file I'd add you!
Re: (Score:3)
public health studies estimate hydroxychloroquine use was linked to at least 17,000 deaths worldwide, though the true toll is likely higher.
"linked to" and "likely higher". Was it also clear (at the time) what was and wasn't misinformation for COVID?
Yes,
I thought the medical community wasn't sure at the time.
The medical community wasn't sure at first, but data came in pretty quickly once it started being investigated. This is typical of science: you start out knowing nothing, you learn more and start knowing "maybe but we're not sure", and you keep on increasing your level of certainty. But too many people were dazzled by the early "maybe" and turned their ears off to avoid hearing the "but turns out not."
Hydroxychloroquine actually is a miracle drug. It's just not a miracle drug that cured COVID-19.
I hear that YouTube is restoring accounts for people who lost theirs due to COVID misinformation and Election misinformation NOW. I am sure those people had no lasting effects on their lives when their primary source of income was cut off
If thei
Re: (Score:2)
Disinformation is fought with more speech, not censorship.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, politicians aren't really speaking to each other, they are trying to WIN the audience over. They will say anything they think will accomplish this.
This sums it up nicely. From Thank You for Smoking.
Joey Naylor: [eating fast food, next to Ferris wheel, at the Santa Monica Amusement Pier] ... so what happens when you're wrong? ...but you didn't prove that vanilla was the best...
Nick Naylor: Whoa, Joey I'm never wrong.
Joey Naylor: But you can't always be right...
Nick Naylor: Well, if it's your job to be right, then you're never wrong.
Joey Naylor: But what if you are wrong?
Nick Naylor: OK, let's say that you're defending chocolate, and I'm defending vanilla. Now if I were to say to you: 'Vanilla is the best flavour ice-cream', you'd say...
Joey Naylor: No, chocolate is.
Nick Naylor: Exactly, but you can't win that argument... so, I'll ask you: so you think chocolate is the end all and the all of ice-cream, do you?
Joey Naylor: It's the best ice-cream, I wouldn't order any other.
Nick Naylor: Oh! So it's all chocolate for you is it?
Joey Naylor: Yes, chocolate is all I need.
Nick Naylor: Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our ice-cream, and that Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
Joey Naylor: But that's not what we're talking about
Nick Naylor: Ah! But that's what I'm talking about.
Joey Naylor:
Nick Naylor: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong I'm right.
Joey Naylor: But you still didn't convince me
Nick Naylor: It's that I'm not after you. I'm after them.
[points into the crowd]
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]