Ask Lemmy
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And this is the problem.
I see objectively misleading, clickbait headlines and articles from bad (eg not recommended by Wikipedia) sources float to the top of Lemmy all the time.
I call them out, but it seems mods are uninterested in enforcing more strict information hygiene.
Step 1 is teaching journalism and social media hygiene as a dedicated class in school, or on social media… And, well, the US is kinda past that being possible :/.
There might be hope for the rest of the world.
In US English classes at any level above middle school, the importance of finding valid sources and providing citations is emphasized, although that's mainly for essays and the like.
I could imagine it would be possible to adapt that mindset towards social media as well. Provide your sources, so you can prove you understand what you are saying. The foundations are there, they just need to be applied.
Except there are plenty of "sources" that spew even more BS. We can't even trust what comes out of our government anymore (by design).
You’re right, I remember this. It just needs to be updated.
That's true, but from what I remember, half the class was either goofing off, sleeping, or straight up not there. Education as a whole isn't valued in the US anymore. Students/parents blame teachers when their kid doesn't magically absorb the information without doing any of the work or studying. Trade schools are becoming more popular because of the costs of college, but deep down, they think it's an easy way to make good money. Those trades require hard work as well. Cost of college is most definitely contributed to the overall lack of education but that's not causing the average US high schooler to have a reading level of a 5th grader in the UK.
Hey, just wanted to say I’m always grateful when someone calls out posts not linking to proper sources. Your doing good work, thanks!
Most of the misinformation I regularly find on top are statements made by the US president or his administration – and these are news reports in an appropriate context with appropriate commentary by Lemmy users. Occasionally, very rarely, I have also seen misinformation about the US president, but I don't see that as much of a problem.
Rather, I see it as a very serious problem that the US president himself and his administration are massively spreading misinformation. That is what my question refers to.
With no offense/singling out intended, this is what I’m talking about.
You (and many others) are interested in misinformation from MAGA, but not from misreported news on MAGA. But it's these little nuggets that his media ecosystem pounces on and has gotten Trump to where is.
And it’s exactly the same on the “other side.” The MAGA audience is combing the greater news ecosystem for misinformation like a hawk while turning a blind eye to their own.
The answer is for everyone to have better information hygiene, and that includes shooting misleading down story headlines one might otherwise like. It means being critical of your own information stream as you read.
So you think it's okay for the US president to spread misinformation? You really don't see a problem with that, even though you yourself talk about "information hygiene"?
Of course not.
But Trump's going to do it and no one is going to stop him. And if we aren’t willing to look at, say, Lemmy and misleading upvoted posts, how can we possibly tell MAGA acolytes to do the same thing on a more extreme scale?
Well, my question was about how to counter the constant misinformation spread by influential people like Trump (there are people like him in pretty much every country) – that's why I mentioned other platforms, because Lemmy is completely irrelevant in this context due to its very limited reach.
Ah.
Well IMO, we really can’t.
I think the old adage of the internet applies: don’t feed the trolls. Trying to counter Trump just feeds his media machine with engagement, which is what got us here.
In other words, there is no such thing as bad attention.
Hence, I think we should focus our ire on the systems propping that up (like Big Tech's engagement driven social media, profit above all news and such), not on Trump directly.