i really dislike the word "misinformation" / "disinformation." it's presumptuous to assert that you know what constitutes "information" and what constitutes "not information" and underhanded to make it an implicit part of the frame so it's harder to notice and object to
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it's awkward that english doesn't appear to have a word for the opposite of a lie
which is *not* a truth. it's a statement which may be true or false but which is being reported honestly in good faith
do we seriously not have a word for this? come on
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"social media should simply institute policies making it harder to spread misinformation" pretty much exactly translates to "social media should simply institute policies making it harder to spread opinions i disagree with" which is just very bad
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people who are spreading plague conspiracy theories or w/e in good faith are *trying to do it right*: they have actual opinions about important things and they are trying to improve other people's lives by telling them about it
this is normal prosocial human behavior
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the bigger problem, as i see it, is that we no longer have the luxury of being able to pretend that we agree collectively on an answer to the question "whose job is it to make sense of the world"
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whose job did it used to be? idk but if i had to bullshit about it, first the church and then TV? at some point the cover story was "scientists"
but now it's nobody's job and everybody's job. lots of people are applying for the position and it's an uncomfortable power scramble
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anyway everyone knows the real answer: it's scott alexander's job. glad he's back
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this bullshit right here
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Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3)Show this thread
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lol
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ah great the twitter "birdwatch" thing is getting used to flag complaints about regulatory agencies being Slow as "Misinformed, or potentially misleading"
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I was on a similar train-of-thought here
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Reading this article and struck by a sense that shorthand like "far right" & "fascists" are being used sloppily (in general, not just by TC) and we'd be better off with full phrases like "people who advocate violence as a solution to disagreements" or "p… ift.tt/39E3SQX
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or "people who support using race as a way to decide who gets hired, fired, or arrested" or "people who are, as far as I can tell, saying whatever they think will get them more favor/power, rather than speaking truthfully" (separate from whether I agree with them)
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Depends on the opinions and their impact doesn’t it? Example: Potentially as many as hundreds of thousands of Americans need not have died, had top government officials not downplayed the danger of COVID-19. People actually die with bad information, and that is real.
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Now, it’s more complicated, because as you say, people are the determiners of the value of opinions and are notoriously bad at understanding things well. Seeing get banned from Facebook is a good recent example of where humans seem to gave gotten it terribly wrong.
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