Addressing Misinformation and Harmful Content Online

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by wingssail

What I think we need to address, or at least identify, are those cases where the creator of the content has no intention of being a good journalist, is aware of his/her bias, and is knowingly creating misinformation. I see a lot of harm done by the media which allows and facilitates widespread desemination of that and I'd like to see that limited.

Agreed, but with a slight tweak. If you are knowingly creating misinformation, then you are NOT a journalist. You are a propagandist or a proponent. Part of the problem is that we have so blurred the lines of opinion purveyors (the propagandists and proponents) that most of the public has hard time discerning the difference.

Originally Posted by wingssail

Allow free speech, but don't facilitate spreading misinformation.

Agreed. But sometimes it's a hard line to walk. When in doubt, I'd rather err on the side of free speech.

Originally Posted by wingssail

And it is a difficult line to avoid crossing, but I think the cancel culture has gone too far, however we need, again, to a stop facilitating the spread of misinformation. But hey, getting someone fired, or prevented from speaking, because thier views are not popular, is not democratic either.

I am almost never in favour of silencing anyone. I think it's dangerous to drive purveyors of misinformation underground. Ideas need to fully aired and challenged. Driving them into their own silos just produces information echo chambers. And we can all see negative outcomes of that approach.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I challenge this a bit. People who are subject-matter experts, or people who have a position based on experience (eg older) and a track record of being fair and intelligent analyzers (eg court judges, senior journalists and editors, village elders), provide a useful service to us by giving us their opinion on something.

Yes, perhaps you're correct. An opinion based on actual expertise isn't exactly biased in the sense we normally use it. It is biased ... towards truth and reality, but not in the sense of pushing some unstated aim.

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Exactly, more channels repeating the same mantra doesn't equal diversity.

Yes, that's the claim that needs evidence or support. The data cited so far says nothing about what any channel is saying.

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Exactly, more channels repeating the same mantra doesn't equal diversity.

Yes but more channels presenting the same facts equal facts.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by wingssail

What I think we need to address, or at least identify, are those cases where the creator of the content has no intention of being a good journalist, is aware of his/her bias, and is knowingly creating misinformation. I see a lot of harm done by the media which allows and facilitates widespread desemination of that and I'd like to see that limited.

Allow free speech, but don't facilitate spreading misinformation.

And it is a difficult line to avoid crossing, but I think the cancel culture has gone too far, however we need, again, to a stop facilitating the spread of misinformation. But hey, getting someone fired, or prevented from speaking, because thier views are not popular, is not democratic either.

Here is the problem. Anyone who goes after reporters who do this are called out as hating free speech. As a result, there is no backstop.

"Journalists" have learned this lesson, so have no fear of putting out misleading and even false articles. In fact, it is rewarded as the more salacious and outlandish an article they produce, the more likely it is to be disseminated and more likely to get wide attention.

So how can we jerk out of control journalists up without ending free speech? Until we do so, they are only going to get worse.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Yes but more channels presenting the same facts equal facts.

You will note, I specifically used the word "mantra" not "facts".

The lack of fact based reporting is at the core of the problem. It's all opinion, all the time.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

"Journalists" have learned this lesson, so have no fear of putting out misleading and even false articles. In fact, it is rewarded as the more salacious and outlandish an article they produce, the more likely it is to be disseminated and more likely to get wide attention.

"Journalists" don't put out knowingly misleading or false articles. That is the job of the proponent or propagandist or politician. This is the problem, we can no longer tell journalists from propagandists. And for this I blame the companies that own the news media, which as I say, have so blurred the lines of journalism vs opinion that lay readers/viewers now have a hard time discerning the difference.

Originally Posted by valhalla360

So how can we jerk out of control journalists up without ending free speech? Until we do so, they are only going to get worse.

Here's how: Stop rewarding propagandists. Stop watching opinion shows or reading editorialists. If the ratings and clicks for this content stopped, then the businesses that support them would also stop.

On the flip side, DO read and view good journalism. Better still, support it financially. That's how we you get change.

[Mike OReilly]

CBC investigation:
Marketplace flagged over 800 social media posts with COVID-19 misinformation. Only a fraction were removed

Marketplace producers, between Feb. 3 and Feb. 16, combed through Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter — using the user tool to flag and report more than 800 posts that breach each company's policies that cover, among other things, posting misinformation.

The result: 12 per cent of the posts were labelled with warnings or taken down entirely. That number jumped to 53 per cent only after Marketplace journalists identified themselves and shared the findings directly with the companies.
...
Of the 832 posts Marketplace flagged, 391 came from Facebook, 166 from Instagram, 173 from Twitter and 102 from YouTube. The posts had a combined 1.5 million likes and 120,000 comments and covered a range of COVID-19-related topics, but generally circled back to a few central themes: vaccines are dangerous, COVID-19 isn't and don't trust authorities.
...
"What's really great about this study is that this tells us what they're doing when they think no one is watching."

[boatman61]

What.???
They didn't check CF..???
Surprised no one has reported the site..

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by boatman61

What.???
They didn't check CF..???
Surprised no one has reported the site..

I tried, but they said we weren't wacky enough. Guess we gotta up our game .

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I tried, but they said we weren't wacky enough. Guess we gotta up our game .

CF will always be like a lone boat anchored in a large bay, that flushes waste directly into the water: momentarily stinky and annoying, but insignificant overall.

[larsfforsberg]

I think you can trace the problem back to CNN in the early 90's. This was the beginning of the 24 hour news cycle. Now the 24 hours must be filled with advertiser funded crap, disguised as news. I'm pretty sure, even though I wasn't around back in the 1800's that the "news" was crap and lies then too. I suspect that it is just more obvious now, and becoming more obvious every day. I know that clearly most of the people reading this thing hate Donald Trump, the guy did a great job of showing just how far the news has gotten from being news, and how corrupt politics has become. No thinking person can deny that big media hated him for calling them out. Politicians hated him for putting the light on their dirty deeds. You can hate him for whatever you want, while calling him a hater....hahaha. At the end of the day, the media is in bed with politics, like they always have been. Nothing has changed.

[GordMay]

If the news [or science] sounds too good to be true, or too wacky to be real, or very conveniently supports a contentious cause, then you might want to check its veracity.

There are plenty of reasons a science news story might not be sound. Quacks and charlatans take advantage of the complexity of science, some content providers can’t tell bad science, from good, and some politicians/advocates peddle fake science, to support their positions.

We also have biases in our own thinking, that might predispose us to fall for a particular piece of fake science news.

Availability:
People give their own memories and experiences more credence than they deserve, making it hard to accept new ideas and theories. Psychologists call this quirk the availability bias. It’s a useful built-in shortcut, when you need to make quick decisions, and don’t have time to critically analyze lots of data; but it messes with our fact-checking skills.

Salience:
In the fight for attention, sensational statements beat out unexciting, but more probable, facts. The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of vivid occurrences is called the salience bias. It leads people to mistakenly believe overhyped findings, and trust confident politicians, in place of cautious scientists.

Confirmation:
A confirmation bias can be at work as well. People tend to give credence to news that fits their existing beliefs. This tendency helps climate change denialists, and anti-vaccine advocates, believe in their causes, in spite of the scientific consensus against them.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by GordMay

If the news [or science] sounds too good to be true, or too wacky to be real, or very conveniently supports a contentious cause, then you might want to check its veracity.

There are plenty of reasons a science news story might not be sound. Quacks and charlatans take advantage of the complexity of science, some content providers can’t tell bad science, from good, and some politicians/advocates peddle fake science, to support their positions.

We also have biases in our own thinking, that might predispose us to fall for a particular piece of fake science news.

Availability:
People give their own memories and experiences more credence than they deserve, making it hard to accept new ideas and theories. Psychologists call this quirk the availability bias. It’s a useful built-in shortcut, when you need to make quick decisions, and don’t have time to critically analyze lots of data; but it messes with our fact-checking skills.

Salience:
In the fight for attention, sensational statements beat out unexciting, but more probable, facts. The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of vivid occurrences is called the salience bias. It leads people to mistakenly believe overhyped findings, and trust confident politicians, in place of cautious scientists.

Confirmation:
A confirmation bias can be at work as well. People tend to give credence to news that fits their existing beliefs. This tendency helps climate change denialists, and anti-vaccine advocates, believe in their causes, in spite of the scientific consensus against them.

And strangely enough these points work the other way as well..

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by boatman61

And strangely enough these points work the other way as well..

Indeed, they work all ways, because we are "ALL" [me included] subject to human foibles. Not, at all, strange.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

"Journalists" don't put out knowingly misleading or false articles. That is the job of the proponent or propagandist or politician. This is the problem, we can no longer tell journalists from propagandists. And for this I blame the companies that own the news media, which as I say, have so blurred the lines of journalism vs opinion that lay readers/viewers now have a hard time discerning the difference.

By this standard, the last journalist died some time ago. They are just as much complicit as the owners.

It's a nice thought to starve out these fake journalists but reality is it's wishful thinking that enough people will do it to have any effect. More likely, they will call out any organized effort as being anti-free speech.