Ask Lemmy

This problem is hardly an issue on this platform.

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.

I've tried a lot and the problem is that the people are entrenched in their beliefs. They are in irrational states of mind on social media, and you can't rationally talk to people in that state of mind.

The most successful I've had is simply the Socratic method. Remain calm, simply ask open ended questions which are designed to just make them question their tightly held beliefs. Why are cities less safe, why do you feel this, etc. however even I find they will often just get angry at that even.

Ultimately, it's not social media which will win minds. It's in the open. I've had more luck meeting people casually in bars and talking to them vs on a keyboard

I just wanna know: What do you do when talking to a friend IRL, face to face, and they tell you something that isn't true?

While there may aftually be people trying to push an agenda, I suspect 90% or more people who "spread misinformation online" are just regular old idiots.

People don't suddenly stop being people just because they have a computer and anonimity. And a lot of people are just misinformed.

Best way to stop misinformation online? Same as it is offline: Through better fucking education.

Lol misinformation is still an issue on Lemmy, don't kid yourself

This problem is hardly an issue on this platform.

LOLOL -- This platform is just as bad as Reddit for misinformation. It's usually silly shit, but it's almost always 90% truth laced with 10% lie. The fact that you believe it's somehow immune to this is just testament to how hard it is for people to see this kind of thing clearly when it's "on their side". Problem is, any time it's called out, people get massively downvoted for it, so people have stopped calling it out.

I look at any individual's history when they post anything sketchy and contextualize. Anything politically motivated is likely a shill unless they have a long broadly engaged post history across many subjects with depth. I block a lot of people too.

step 1. misinformation is a problem on every platform. full stop.

I think what you mean is maliciously manufactured information. still, I believe Lemmy is subject to it.

I believe that both types can be effectively dispatched by effectively moderating the community, but not in the sense that you might be thinking.

I believe that we are looking at community moderation from the wrong direction. today, the goal of the mod is to prune and remove undesired content and users. this creates high overhead and operational costs. it also increases chances for corruption and community instability. look no further than Reddit and lemmy for this where we have a handful of mods that are in-charge of multiple communities. who put them there? how do you remove them should they no longer have the communities best interests in mind? what power do I have as a user to bring attention to corruption?

I believe that if we flip the role of moderators to be instead guardians of what the community accepts instead of what they can see it greatly reduces the strain on mods and increases community involvement.

we already use a mechanism of up/down vote. should content hit a threshold below community standards, it's removed from view. should that user continue to receive below par results from inside the community, they are silenced. these par grades are rolling, so they would be able to interact within the community again after some time but continued abuse of the community could result in permanent silencing. should a user be unjustly silenced due to abuse, mod intervention is necessary. this would then flag the downvoters for abuse demerits and once a demerit threshold is hit, are silenced.

notice I keep saying silenced instead of blocked? that's because we shouldn't block their access to content or the community or even let them know nobody is seeing their content. in the case of malicious users/bots. the more time wasted on screaming into a void the less time wasted on corrupting another community. in-fact, I propose we allow these silenced users to interact with each other where they can continue to toxify and abuse each other in a spiraling chain of abuse that eventually results in their permanent silencing. all the while, the community governs itself and the users hum along unaware of what's going on in the background.

IMO it's up to the community to decide what is and isn't acceptable and mods are simply users within that community and are mechanisms to ensure voting abuse is kept in check.

Hardly an issue on Lemmy?

Or does it just feel that way when everyone around you has the same views?

Linking to sources, that is a big one. Even something as honest as "I read it off this Wikipedia page [link]" goes a long way in showing that the poster is not pulling an idea out of their ass.

I will always prefer having debates where both sides cite their information, even if there isn't a satisfying agreement at the end. Plus, faulty sources can be debunked when more eyes are able to scrutinize it.

If we want to go the route of the Responsibility of the Individual: Resolve to not get your political etc. news from social media. Draw a line for yourself: cool to get gaming news from random influencers online? Probably. News about global events? At this point might be better for most people's mental health to ignore them and focus more locally. However, read how to read a book, make your best effort at finding a reputable news organization and check those for news if you must have them. On same vein, if you don't read at least some article about an event being discussed on social media, DON'T COMMENT. Don't engage with that post. If it really grabs at you, go find an article about it from a trusted source, and depending on how much it animates you, try to get a bigger picture of the event. Assume that vast majority of ALL CONTENT online is currently incentivized to engage you - to capture your attention, which is actually the most valuable asset you have. Where you put your attention will define how you feel about your life. It's highly advicable to put it where you feel love.

Responsibility of the Collective: Moving in hierarchies, we can start demanding that social media moderators (or whatever passes for those in any given site) prevent misinformation as much as possible. Try to only join communities that have mods that do this. Failing that, demand social media platforms prevent misinformation. Failing that, we can demand the government does more to prevent misinformation. All of those solutions have significant issues, one of them being they are all very incentivized to capture the attenttion of as many people as possible. Doesn't matter what the exact motivation is - it could be a geneinly good one. A news organization uses social media tactics to get the views so that their actually very factual and dilligently compiled articles get the spread. Or, they could be looking to drive their political agenda - which they necessarily do anyway because desire to be factual and as neutral as possible is a stance as well. One that may run afoul of the interests of some government that doesn't value freedom of press - which is very dangerous and you need to think hard for yourself how you feel about the idea of the government limiting what kind of information you can access. For the purposes of making this shorter, you can regard massive social media platforms as virtual governments too. In fact, it would be a good idea in general.

The thing with misinformation is that many people who talk about it subtly think that they are above it themselves. They're thinking that they know they're not subject to propaganda and manipulation but it's the other poor fools that need to be protected from it. It's the Qanon and Antivaxxers. But you know better, you know how to dig deeper into massively complicated global topics and find out what the true and right opinion about them is. You can't. Not even if we weren't in the middle of multiple fucking information wars. You'd do well to focus on what you can know for sure, in your own experience. If you don't like the idea of individual responsibility though, because "most people aren't going to do it" - your best bet at getting a collective response is a group of individuals coming together under the same ideal. It'll happen sooner or later anyway and there's going to be plenty of suffering before either way.

[misinformation] is hardly an issue on this platform […]

In my opinion, that statement of yours is, ironically, responsible for why there may be an issue with misinformation. You state it with certainty, yet you provide no source to back up your claim. It is my belief that this sort of conjecture is at the source of misinformation issues.

Misinformation is part of the nature of social media and can't be fixed. Stupid people are stupid. There are A LOT of them on social media. The dishonest take advantage of the stupid to spread misinformation. The only way to counteract it is to have gatekeeping, which will crush the user count and block out the biggest users, and network effect will funnel most of the rest into the biggest. (i.e. the one with the most lenient gatekeeping)

The only hope is that people realize how stupid, unrepresentative, and unsuitable social media discourse is. It's a place to find funny pictures of cats and boobs. Looking to it for anything serious, or pretending what you see there is representative of anything, is pointless at best and likely harmful.

It's a pretty regulaely a big problem here.

But to answer your question, just check sources, verify with a second outlet, and call it out when you see it. That's all you can do on an individual level.

Media literacy is an old and important topic. Are you asking for an introduction to it?

IMO, the typical approach of using fact-checking services to rate the accuracy of sources is inevitably flawed: if a source (or a fact checker) builds a reputation for reliability, it will eventually be suppressed or subverted into exploiting its reputation for other purposes.

A better option might be to treat all sources as potentially informative, but not at face value: rather, build a predictive model of each source, and treat as significant only those stories that deviate from prediction (i.e., stories that seem atypical for that source). Those are the stories most likely to convey information the source didn’t generate itself.

It honestly just depends on how many steps you want. You're going to have to figure out the logistics of taking them, first of all. Do you want to take a premade set of steps or would you rather mold/cast them onsite?

Obviously concrete is heavy af, so if you are going to precast them, you might consider using less steps. The more steps you add, the heavier its going to be. Of course, this isn't an issue if you have a heavy duty vehicle with a lift.

Also, do you want rails on them? That will take extra time to set them in place.

Some examples i would recommend would be something like these.

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Or maybe this

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impossible, when the platform itself is the one enabling or promoting, google/youtube, meta all allows it and encourages because its more advertisement money, plus it shores up male/right wing voters which will benefit the companies in the long run in the form of low/non-existent taxes plus tax havens, they think long term. "left leaning"(that is not annoying tankie rhetoric) content is almost universally quashed or heavily astroturfed on most SOCIAL media.

Reddit is getting there. Only way is to host your own forum ,and have controls, probably some form automation to block trolls spammers. the users should be cognizant what is being said and fact checking themselves to prevent themselves from being drawn into disinformation/misinformation.

What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media? […]

Regarding my own content: I do my best to cite any claim that I make, no matter how trivial. If I make a statement for which I lack confidence in its veracity, I do my best to convey that uncertainty. I do my best to convey explicitly whether a statement is a joke, or sarcasm.

Fundamentally, my approach to this issue is based on this quote:

Rationality is not a character trait, it's a process. If you fool yourself into believing that you're rational by default, you open yourself up to the most irrational thinking. ^[1]^

Regarding the content of others: If I come across something that I believe to be false, I try to politely respond to it with a sufficiently and honestly cited statement explaining why I think it is false. If I come across something of unknown veracity/clarity, I try to politely challenge the individual responsible to clarify their intent/meaning.

For clarity, I have no evidence to support that what I'm doing is an effective means to this end, but I want to believe that it's helping in at least some small way.

What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media?

Teach people how to cite appropriately.

We learned how to do it in middle school, but I can tell most of my adult peers either didn't pay attention or forgot.