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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I mean, it may be BS, yes, it may in some cases save lives too, idk, does not seem like a black and white thing to me
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
so what would you call like, a rumour that drinking ethanol cures COVID?
(which really happened by the way and that single rumour killed 700-800 people)
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like personally idk how you reconcile your desire for there to be no word for misinformation & your fears around COVID
seems like you individually are in much more danger as a direct result of the absence of any active response to dangerous rumors theguardian.com/us-news/2020/a
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hmm. so, it's relevant here that i extremely do not believe that twitter allowing people to tag other people's tweets as "misleading" will actually improve the epistemic situation, mostly i expect it to be either useless or a huge source of conflict
like imagine being in a fight with your bf and every time you say something that isn't like 100% accurate he's like "that's not what happened"
it doesn't help! you're not just like "oh you're right phew nvm then"
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people already have all these crazy entrenched beliefs, cat's already out of the bag there, and maybe it'll be useful on the margin to have some sort of tagging policy in place but the core of people who've decided this is an identity / politics thing will get *angrier*
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