The tricky part is defining misinformation
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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The ‘impossible’ part is defining misinformation. FTFY
Politics on forums like this where users decide what the truth is (upvotes, downvotes, front page, etc) will always be brigaded by shills and fans. And even worse, by authors of those truths. It’s a mouthpiece for the loudest out there.
...and "accurate information". Especially in today's world where every media outlet has bias.
Everyone keeps talking about mis and dis information, while carefully neglecting to talk about the most important question: who defines what is and isn’t “good information”???? Anytime someone says it’s “the science” or what’s legal then you can be sure they have never read or even heard of history.
This last period will be taught in the future as the dark period of journalism, information sharing, and freedom in our current so called “democracy”.
It'd probably only be applicable for a very few issues that would have wide consensus in the scientific community. The ones that come to mind are vaccines and global warming. But if you only go by very broad consensus items like that, it won't necessarily be very impactful overall. But thats probably good to not risk an incorrect assessment.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and the Covid vaccine is safe and effective.
Funny, it's apparently not actually difficult to identify mis- and disinformation. People who tell you otherwise have an agenda.
In a metatextual sense, you and I both know how hard it is to define though. But yeah misinformation that has a potentially harmful outcome to it needs to find as much resistance as possible and be quarantined
Yes we need to do something about the viral sharing of straight up actual, demonstrable lies. The liars are the only ones who benefit from the rhetoric that lies are impossible to identify.
"...but muh quarterly profits!!1"
-Meta