Hacker News Reader

Comment by yuvalr1 | Hacker News Reader

There are ways to educate people to develop critical reading and identify when they are being lied to on the internet.

Censorship and sanctions are less preferred because:

1. They create even more distrust and encourage conspiracy theories

2. More importantly, just like journalists (who have agendas), fact checkers also have agendas. The journalism problem is solved by pluralism: having many different media platforms with different agendas allows for balance and exposure to various facts. However, due to the monopolistic nature of the social platforms, we can't have that here. What happens is that a very small number of people controls what we know and what we don't. Just imagine if Fox News was the only news platform - devastating, isn't it?

For these reasons, social media should not be allowed to decide on they're own what is fact and what is not.

View on HN

>Censorship and sanctions are less preferred because They create even more distrust and encourage conspiracy theories

do they? everything i've seen seems to show that this sort of censorship really does work basically exactly as intended. for example, https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

letting misinformation spread tends to spread misinformation. shutting misinformation campaigns down disrupts them, and if done broadly enough prevents new ones from gaining traction. yes, it might spawn new conspiracy theories, but if they only reach a few people they cause far less harm than the widespread misinformation that the actions are meant to disrupt.

I think we're still learning. E.g.: deplatforming individuals works pretty well. Milo Y isn't relevant. On the other hand, there's some evidence that deplatforming movements is less effective: right-wing extremism shifting to Telegram, QAnon conspiracy theories moving to smaller forums. Possibly the effects vary depending on how large the population of believers has become?

I am in favor of shutting down misinformation (although I also know the same tools can be used for bad reasons), but I think the field of digital mass communication is young enough so that we're best served by remaining open to new discoveries.

I do wonder if we'd be better off phrasing this as a conversation about discoverability rather than one about censorship.

I think you might be conflating macro and micro. At the level of a single issue it can be effective if used sparingly.

The argument, as I understand it, is that frequent and continued use of these techniques over time lead to those issues.

Anecdotally I have had several conversations with younger, misguided men, that considered the suppression of holocaust denial information was proof that it never happened. In their logic, why would would some much effort be placed in suppressing this information if it was so obviously false.

One point of note is that the prediction of "users in banned communities will just take their hate elsewhere" did strike true. Users either left reddit to take their views to other websites, or moved to either directly related or tangentially related subs. While I don't think this is an excuse to not stand up against bad behaviour, it very much proves that this is akin to shooing criminals away from your town to terrorise another.

But I don't think that's a problem. You'll never rid the world of viciously tribal behaviour, so your only hope is to herd the perpetrators away to a location where their actions will bother as few people as possible.

Reddit certainly hasn't rid itself of viciously tribal behavior; it's more tribal and toxic than ever. But that toxicity is directed at people the reddit administration doesn't like, and at people who've been driven away from reddit, so you may be right that fewer people are bothered now, but only because the separation from people with other opinions has become so wide that people who disagree no longer hear each other.

I haven’t followed the Reddit situation closely, who are the victims of Reddit leadership’s disapproval?

I’m sympathetic to that second point, but I don’t know if I agree isolation is what’s driving the gap in understanding. The tone of disagreement has veered heavily toward saber-rattling in the last decade, which predictably encourages opponents to embrace more extreme positions in an ideological arms race.

It doesn’t take long for that mechanic to generate a chasm of understanding or respect, since reversing it would require one side to “disarm” in hopes their opponent would do the same and meet them in the middle. The trust just isn’t there and so the chasm continues to grow, further eroding trust along the way.

Not exactly true, since the posters themselves thrive on attention and reaching more ppl. For example /r/fatpeoplehate's equivalent at Voat eventually became far less active than it was on Reddit where it was reaching /r/all a lot and gaining new viewers, commenters, posters etc.

Problem is eventually true information gets labeled as misinformation and then censored. Happened and happens in lots of countries that enforce censorship such as USSR and China.

Everyone has an agenda and when the people who label something as misinformation are in a small group and are unaccountable to the public, it’s almost inevitable this will happen, considering the incentives.

The point isn't whether misinformation should be shut. The point is who decides what is information and what is misinformation. And how do you stop vested interests from just branding anything they don't like as misinformation.

I really don't understand this: the left believe that they would never be censored? Censorship is about power, and the scale of power can tilt towards either side pretty soon. What if later the country moves towards the right, and the left gets censored for legitimate discussions on election fairness, on health care, on tax reform, on education, or on corruption of politicians? Would you left feel happy if your questions were labeled disinformation? The left did read history about how an entire nation got silenced, right?

What a world.

A different way to look at this is to consider that 'the left' has already been through this, repeatedly, and is exploring ways to directly counter right-wing propaganda rather than passively sit back and assume the 'marketplace of ideas' will just take care of it as centrists tend to do.

It's unfortunate you're being downvoted for this, as it's true. It's literally illegal to teach anti-capitalist political philosophy in the UK, but there's endless whining about private corporations acting as they see fit with their own property.

Speaking as a leftist, I assume that corporations view me and my ideology as an enemy and would silence me and others like me if we became too influential. I don't think compelled speech is the answer, and I don't believe I have any intrinsic right to use social media to amplify my messages.

It's literally illegal to teach anti-capitalist political philosophy in the UK

Do tell? I haven't been there in a long time and don't have time to keep up with education policy.

From the article I am providing a link to[0]:

>Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools...

I would argue that the left is already censored, so right wing censorship is just leveling up the field, but I guess it depends on how you define the left. When you have half the country assenting that a candidate who doesn't even believe in single payer Healthcare is "radical left",the all hope for discourse is gone.

> There are ways to educate people [to] identify when they are being lied to on the internet.

Do you have a link about this? Because I would love to know of such a technique. Some of my family doesn't know how to identify conspiracy theories from truths.

I don't have a link, but I have some principles that help me do it. I wrote them in another comment in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25399473

> There are ways to educate people to develop critical reading and identify when they are being lied to on the internet.

In my experience, the tech community hates this form of education (the humanities).

> having many different media platforms with different agendas allows for balance and exposure to various facts

This can be a false balance. The Clintons aren't drinking the blood of babies. Cranks suck up all of the oxygen around a discussion, they don't expand it.

> This can be a false balance. The Clintons aren't drinking the blood of babies. Cranks suck up all of the oxygen around a discussion, they don't expand it.

It isn't. Social media hasn't decided on its own that Biden won the election. The state governments that perform the election and publish the results did that.

If you want to know whether you are being lied to, learn math and science. The best info on covid, for example, doesn't come from any journalist, but from the CDC. You just need to know how to find and read it. What exactly do humanities courses help me with here?

True (or mostly so), but not useful. Math is obscure, and science is not trusted.

Not that "we" are any better -- we can't even get technologists (or doctors) to understand statistics. How can we hope for a general-population understanding of scientific process?

My answer: We can't. We can hope for leadership that steers the conversation in a useful direction, but democracy sometimes gets in the way of the elevation of useful leaders, and the media has no interest in promoting good (mostly boring) governance.

> If you want to know whether you are being lied to, learn math and science.

I've got a PhD in CS. I've spent 22 years in the organized education system. Yet I'm barely able to actually understand research results in adjacent CS subfields, let alone an entire scientific discipline. It is absolutely not feasible for even a dedicated person to become meaningfully expert in a large number of fields.

> What exactly do humanities courses help me with here?

The primary loop of humanities work is critical analysis of texts written by humans. A field like history is literally media analysis, except that the media was created by actors in the past rather than actors today.

Social media have tried and failed. They monetize disinformation and hate speech. How long do we wait for alternatives to emerge?

What do you think is the alternative to social media?

No social media. We survived fine without it.

HN and other forums are also social media though, no? Whether it's online or a billboard on the town square it's still social media in a sense. Personally I agree with your sentiment, but in my mind I equate no social media with "the giants" like Facebook, Instagram, tiktok, Snapchat I guess.

I'm not sure exactly what makes them different from more focused forums, but it's something and – in my opinion – I don't think it's a net good for society.

Personally, I have no account with these services. I used to but I deleted all of them and it's made my life richer, not poorer.

> I'm not sure exactly what makes them different from more focused forums

Have you ever been on a smaller focused forum without mods or rules? I haven’t.

I most certainly have, but regardless I fail to see your point. Do you mean to suggest Facebook et al don't have rules or don't enforce those rules? That's just objectively false.

The platforms are designed for growth, forums aren’t. Rule enforcement isn’t their priority and it’s much harder to do it at their scale. Pretty simple really.

I don't have all the answers, but many G7 governments have been working on laws to hold social media accountable for hate speech, including Canada, where hate speech online is not legal.

Pornhub (based in Canada) recently decided to allow uploads only from verified accounts due to political pressure. Twitter/Fb could also require ID verification, for example. They basically already do (require a cell number after account creation), but it's not enforced in all countries.

Anyway, no magic bullet, but if they are held accountable, they will find solutions pretty quickly, as Pornhub did.

> Censorship and sanctions are less preferred because: 1. They create even more distrust and encourage conspiracy theories

Do you have evidence for that? What if you're wrong and your suggestion is making it worse? It's bold to claim in the age of social media that you know the best way to control it when we're in new territory.

It's not like the 80s or 90s when the only way to get and spread news was gated through a small number of newspapers and TV channels. If the media at the time refused to publish a story because of quality or trustworthiness issues, is that really so different here?

“There are ways to educate people to develop critical reading and identify when they are being lied to on the internet.”

Are there simple ways to learn the above?

I personally believe the following principles:

1. While reading, remember every writer has an agenda, and that you read a specific point of view, and there may be others

2. Differentiate between facts and opinions while reading

3. Actively expose yourself to an opposite opinion about the subject

Number 3 is the most important.

I'm not sure that every writer has an agenda. When talking about vaccines or other things that generally benefit everyone, I certainly don't have an agenda, and I expect that genuine researchers (probably most of them, just that we don't necessarily know which) are the same. Well, unless you consider decreasing worldsuck to be an agenda.

Actively exposing yourself is also not something I expect to be helpful. I dove into the 5G conspiracy theory and it's not like the statements or the people are retarded. They will bring reasonable-sounding arguments and respond to you in proper language. I needed to dig rather deep and have a really decent understanding of radio-related topics to know that there isn't a grain of truth to it. For example, digging into sources of sources of sources, you discover that the trail runs cold. Does that mean a statement was made up, or that you just can't find it? It's rather hard to prove that a certain paper does not exist (some of the court-submitted documents referenced papers published by reputable organisations and I figured "surely they don't lie to the court, this has to be somewhere?!" It's a huge time sink and I even got help from one of the believers in digging up the reference, but I never found it and they never got back to me). And even if you find the source, how can you tell if it's real if you don't have a basic understanding of the topic yourself? Exposing yourself to the other side mainly helps when you currently believe the conspiracy theory, which is exactly what you're trying to prevent in the first place. If you're susceptible to this sort of thing, I'd not be surprised if this advice gets more people sucked into the wrong things.

Twitter (and social media) is largely not journalism. Twitter is a for-profit organization that chooses how to obtain maximum profit. So far, profit comes from user engagement, regardless of the nature of content. That they are choosing to intervene with the user-created content in new ways does not change their top-level goals. Their responsibility is to make money, and any lesser goals they decide are company values. If you disagree with those values, specifically that misinformation that erodes a bedstone of elected representative democracies should be discouraged on their platform, then by all means, encourage as many people as you wish not to use this ad-supported corporation.

> educate people to develop critical reading and identify when they are being lied to

All we need to see are nationwide initiatives being planned, funded and executed broadly across education channels.

Could you provide some references that indicate this is happening? Or at least beginning to happen? Is this a viable proposed solution, or is it rather a theoretical or philosophical alternative to real solutions to the mass misinformation crisis?

> More importantly, just like journalists (who have agendas), fact checkers also have agendas.

Do we know how many "fact checkers" lost their jobs after they were 100% wrong about the "Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation" claims?

Nonsense. Targeted censorship has the exact effect of taking the steam out of nonsensical conspiracy theories because you stop the spread of incorrect ideas.

The root problem is how to decide what idea is incorrect. Usually this is decided by a public debate, where multiple people express their opinions, and the issue is concluded after reading and being exposed to the different perspectives. The problem with social media platforms censorship is that it is decided very quickly by a small group of people, without understanding the full scope of perspectives on the matter.

This is why:

> you stop the spread of incorrect ideas

is a dangerous method - you do stop the spread, but who says you do it right?

At some point, even though all of this is subjective, it’s common sense and we can go back and forth on this endlessly but it’s wholly apparent that false conspiracies that threaten the stability of the best society the world has seen should not be encouraged. So most of us, and the people in power make that decision especially given that the company is private and they can do what they want.

I'd argue that it's rarely been decided by a public debate. It's traditionally been decided by (for example) the small number of companies who are in the business of publishing textbooks. Or the small number of people who teach law at prestigious universities. Or the small number of people who decide which textbooks will be bought in Texas, particularly since Texas is a large enough market so that this decision affects other states as well. Or religious figures, laying down a decision about what doctrine can be taught in churches.

Obviously in the past these small groups of people have made the wrong decision, and sometimes that's had very bad consequences. I am not arguing that this is a good methodology. I am arguing that we can't assume that public debate will generate a better set of decisions.

Given the russia hoax, the ukraine hoax, the pretend-the-hunter-biden-laptop-is-russian-disinformation hoax only the willfully ignorant would trust anything that comes out of mainstream journalism these days. They have an agenda and they're buddies with big tech.

It's going to be quite something to see if twitter/facebook/google can create a digital ghetto for half the country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com