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What can we do, as lemmy users, to fight fake news being pushed in the platform? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by YourEmptyWallet to c/asklemmy

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I see a lot of posts lately, mainly in 'world news' communities, that when I investigate their source, I cannot come to any other conclostion that purposefully spreading of fake news and propaganda on lemmy.

I love this platform and want to see it thrive, but the fact that these kind of posts can so easily populate my feed is disturbing.

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[–] Aceticon 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People need to learn to admit to themselves that "I don't know enough" and "I'll refrain to the best of my ability from passing judgment when I don't know enough".

Yeah, the heavy emotion-inducing nature of propaganda is there to push you into "taking a position" (and real news often also have a strong emotion-inducing component, but if they're honest it's not going to be a constant "appeal to emotion" like propaganda) so it's hard to fight oneself on this on such an emotionally feeble principle as "I shall not take stands on shit I don't know", but at least try it.

(And, by the way, this is also a "message to self").

My own experience in political parties (not in the US, by the way, so don't presume, dear reader) has shown me things like, for example, in big party conferences when asked to vote on various things almost nobody actually goes for "I abstain" even when some of those things are of the "very few people are qualified to pass judgment on this" kind. I remember this situation of voting for various suggestions to add to the party electoral program, were in an audience of over 1000 people maybe 3 or 4 would actually abstain once in a while.

Having lived in various countries in Europe, I don't think this difficulty in admiting "I don't know enough to make a choice here" is a local cultural phenomenon.