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Comment by echevil | Hacker News Reader

There are borderline content that’s hard to judge, but also tons of content that’s undoubtedly fake. For years there have been tons of articles floating around WeChat (Chinese social network) that’s completely made up stories and yet causing bad influence. As an example, there was a very popular article claiming seaweeds sold on the market are often made of plastics. Eventually the author of was identified and basically said that was what he felt like, but the impact of this article was real.

The government is in the best position to stop this by establishing laws against creating and spreading such misinformation.

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Why do people trust a random article over some statement issued by the government?

If a government is trustworthy then you need no laws to prevent disinformation. If its not trustworthy then the last thing you want is laws that allow them to clamp down on information.

The traditional western concept is that an educated people will be able to discern who to trust and when ...

This is also why western societies are democratic.

> The traditional western concept is that an educated people will be able to discern who to trust and when ...

That won't solve the immediate problem of caused by fake articles circling around; and it will just bias towards hurting less educated people (who, btw, are exactly the target of those articles)

If there are laws against false information, of course this would need to go through proper law enforcement process, e.g. There must be proof that the articles are made up with intentional lies and the person should go through a trial.

The western societies never solve this problem and there's nothing to be proud about.

I would agree that western societies never solved this problem directly however they did try an indirect approach. Universal education slowly grew till a peak at around the 80s. They tried to arm the average person with Reason as well as practical skills like general literacy and exposure science. You combine that with low corruption and a general trust in authority and you have a very functional society.

But again in all seriousness why would the public believe a random article over any statement by government or other authoritative body?

Let me answer that with first hand experience.

The bulk of rumours in China that is causing issues are the ones that claim some kind of emergency (impending landslide, new virus in certain type of meat). They prey on the "宁可信其有，不可信其无＂mindset, which means "better to believe in something than not believing and suffer as a consequence". Like people will not eat chicken if there's a rumour about chicken being infected, because they will be guaranteed safe if they believe the rumour and don't eat it. That's just how average Chinese citizen thinks. Older generations don't bother to do fact checking.

On top of that, the rumours sometimes claim to be from an official source. Like it will start with "Latest news from the CCP", or "Breaking news from CCTV (national TV channel)". And people trust those sources so they are more likely to believe the rumour without verifying if the source is fake or genuine.

Bottom line is, Chinese people in general have higher degree of trust in government as compared to west. But they are less informed and easier to be tricked by rumours (more gullible), especially people with lower level of education.

People won’t usually believe random articles over statement from government or other authorities body. But most often, the articles never gets debunked since there are so many, and even if they are, it could be too late to repair the damage already done - business getting hurt etc., and the authorities statement may not reach everyone that believed the fake stories.

If there are no laws and there are no consequences making up such stories, nothing can really stop this.

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