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"How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fa

"How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you. Too many people get very angry that people share things they disagree with, and then start talking about clamping down on communication. No, sorry, but your ideas lost. People are allowed to think and share things that make you angry. If your views aren't mainstream, there's a reason for that. "Fake news" is only a tiny part of the equation. If you pick up that censorship weapon, that we all implicitly agree to not use, you will not be the last to wield it.

yosito 2y ago
You can identify fake news to people, and unless someone from their "tribe" identifies it, they will just say that the party identifying it is fake.
- throwaway115 2y ago
  So then you need to come to terms with people rejecting what you want them to believe. Some people won't believe you no matter what. Does that mean you get to reach for another tool, like force, or censorship? No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people.
  - croes 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - throwaway115 2y ago
      >We take away your freedom and put you in jail. The ACLU has defended literal neo-Nazis and white supremacists right to rally and share their ideas on several occasions. Sounds like you would disagree with them, and that people should be imprisoned for having disgusting and hateful ideas. Fortunately, you're wrong. Don't conflate words with actions like hurting someone. There are very narrow restrictions on speech, mostly around calls or threats of imminent violence. But those are extremely rare cases, and they're not what you are broadly describing.
      - croes 2y ago
        >that people should be imprisoned for having disgusting and hateful ideas So what about Charles Manson? >Fortunately, you're wrong Based on what? Have you counted the people who died or got hurt because someone took action because of those disgusting and hateful ideas? Or is this the kind of reasoning where something must be wrong because you don't like it. You already acknowledged there are limits in free speech so now we are just bargaining about the limits. There is no unlimited free speech. Interestingly it seems like speech is rather limited if it's about copyright than human lives.
  - justonenote 2y ago
    > it means you need to accept that you don't control people. This is absolutely the correct take, but also an idea that is unconscionable to the majority of people in government and other institutions involved in setting policies today.
  - drekk 2y ago
    It's not about belief or control. If you're harming the social organism by spreading verifiable falsehoods (vaccines cause autism) then you should be rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be. I can't yell fire in a theater. I'm somehow alive despite that censorship. People need to grow up.
    - throwaway115 2y ago
      Where can I read about the constitutional rights of "the social organism"?
    - justonenote 2y ago
      Do we really have to go over the history of ideas that were once considered falsehoods but are now accepted as truth? Your argument rests on the presumption that we have some kind of Oracle that can divine true information from false. > rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be It's cool that you think humans have changed in nature significantly from the time of the Inquisitions, but when you speak like this about people it's pretty clear we haven't.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people. Not wrong, but when others' mis- and ill-formed view of the world starts effecting others then some kind of action needs to happen: * https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html * https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html * https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-measles-outbreak-vaccination-1.7144915 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-measles-outbreak-vacci... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccines_and_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccines_and_autism * https://www.google.com/search?q=vaccine+autism https://www.google.com/search?q=vaccine+autism
  - yosito 2y ago
    There are tools you can use when you want people to see your perspective, things like empathy and persuasion. You don't just have to fatalistically accept that people think differently than you, you can absolutely attempt to change their mind, in ethical ways.
malfist 2y ago
I don't disagree that people should learn to better recognize fake news, but when you're solution is to have the whole population change their behavior, your solution will not work. Removal of a few super spreaders is infinitely more feasible than having everyone else change their behavior
dgellow 2y ago
The majority doesn’t care, you can give the best tools to identify, they won’t trust them or ignore them
- throwaway115 2y ago
  You're being hyperbolic. Community Notes on X are an example of these tools, and they are not ignored or distrusted from what I've seen. If your tools are poor, make better tools. But also, as a first principle, accept that some people won't believe what you want them to believe, no matter what. That doesn't mean you get to start trying to control them, because you got frustrated.
  - croes 2y ago
    Would you trust community Notes on Truth Social? They aren't a tool to identify fake news just an additional information layer which you either trust or xou don't. >If your tools are poor, make better tools If you are a bad painter buy better brushes. You solution doesn't give the people the tools you still have just a source which claims to show what's true. The real tool is the user himself using his brain. But that's hard to achive.
    - kylebenzle 2y ago
      Exactly, Twitter tends to be liberal and so their community responses also tend to be liberal.
    - anileated 2y ago
      If you trust community notes on Twitter, I have news for you (https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5080048 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5080048). Community notes are used as just another channel to spread misinformation, but this time under convenient guise of truth, and that is why it is a flawed design.
      - croes 2y ago
        I know, but I needed an example where the tool as such is ca. 100% useless to show it's not a real tool but just a additional layer of some authority you need to trust.
bluepizza 2y ago
We provide everyone with way too many hard to use tools, just because we don't want to stop the problem at the source. A normal adult needs to use to many tools and chase so many different types of education by themselves, off the top of my mind: financial, real estate, health, technology, purchasing habits, utilities providers, news and misinformation, nutrition, commonly applied scams. Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal, and prosecute those that do it.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  > Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal How do you define this in law? Many of us tap-tap on keyboards and charge people thousands of dollars per week for that. Are we taking advantage of them? We then watch as the staff who works hard to clean our office buildings make 1/10th of what we make. Are we taking advantage of them? If someone comes to my house on a weekend and charges me double the normal price to unclog my toilet or get my heat working again, am I being taken advantage of? If there’s a shortage of generators in an area and I drive in a truckload of them from hundreds of miles away and make them available at a profit to myself, am I taking advantage? Different people will have legitimately differing opinions on questions above. “Make it illegal to take advantage of people via laws” is much easier to say than to do.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  My litmus test is what advertisers, marketers and salesmen can do, as the limit of that is where it turns into illegal scams. Yes, I claim this is a continuum, the legal line dividing shrewd business from fraud is arbitrary, and IMO placed way too far towards the "fraud" end, i.e. allowing too much.
sobkas 2y ago
> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you. When you teach people to recognise fake news they will be able to recognise your fake news. What you want is to cut people from enemy fake news (or truth, they are enemy, it doesn't matter) so they will believe everything you say while enemy can't influence them.
- thriftwy 2y ago
  The Internet was created with the implicit idea that everybody brings their stuff (including news) to the table and then the best one wins. Back then the US/Free World ones were clearly the best. If you want nobody in your country to read any news procured by China/Russia, this kind of defeats the original idea. You've now built something else entirely - like a glorified teletext or minitel.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye I think this is the underlying problem. The Man® want us to only read his fake news to be able to get away with whatever they wanna push. One fundamental precondition for a functional democracy is the right to be wrong, since that is judged arbitrary anyways. The problem with manipulation stems from algorithmic ad feeds anyways. E.g. chronological 'my friends only' feeds did not have that problem.
- throwaway115 2y ago
  I don't want that, but I see your point. I would rather our population have a healthy immune system where bad ideas just don't survive, than to have us live as Bubble Boy, cut off from the rest of the world forever.
  - atmavatar 2y ago
    Alas, I fear even if we had a perfect utopia where it was easy to give everyone the choice between fake news that reinforces their beliefs and unopinionated, factual news, it won't turn out any different than placing a bunch of hungry children in a room where there's a table of sweets and a table of nutritious vegetables. Hell, even if it was adults given some training for self-control, the vast majority of them will dip into the sweets table from time to time. People are really good at rationalization, such that even if they know up-front which choice was fake news and which was not, I bet you'd similarly observe a significant fraction (if not majority or super majority) of people choosing the fake news to feel better. Sadly, I'm unaware of any real solutions to the fake news problem that don't make things even worse.
biophysboy 2y ago
I don’t disagree, but my worry is that this approach will be as effective as diet/exercise has been for obesity
- DavidPiper 2y ago
  "The solution can't be personal responsibility. But also the solution is personal responsibility." It's something I keep coming back to, and I'm really not sure how to resolve it.
  - probably_wrong 2y ago
    My opinion on that dilemma: some problems are so widespread that it makes more sense to deal with them collectively, aiming to cut them down at the root. We usually appoint people to deal with with them because it's more effective than everyone having to act in concert. Those people are called "politicians". Do those people do a good job? Kinda - they tend to get everything uniformly wrong and sometimes they really screw something up, but in general they land more often than not in reasonable compromises. And while your Senator may be a corrupt idiot, the people in their staff may be okay and steer them generally in a sane direction.
kylebenzle 2y ago
[flagged]
jasonjayr 2y ago
There is a stark difference between "fake news" and "difference of opinion that I don't agree with". "fake news" typically amounts to false rumors, amplifying unprovable/unsubstantiated claims. That's what needs to stop, and what is greatly damaging discourse. I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts.
- throwaway115 2y ago
  >I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts. Opinion a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
  - epgui 2y ago
    Opinions don't need to be supported by facts or based on facts. They do need to be compatible with factual reality, otherwise they're called delusions.
    - DavidPiper 2y ago
      Unfortunately, phantasms[1] and mass delusions are also very much possible. Increasingly, opinions don't need to be compatible with factual reality to be believed. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/pyfhzb/please_explain_to_me_what_a_phantasm_exactly_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/pyfhzb/please_e... (Sorry for the Reddit link, it's the most succinct explanation I could find)
      - epgui 2y ago
        That’s true… and it’s perfectly compatible with what I wrote.
    - tanseydavid 2y ago
      Delusional people do not speak in terms of opinion they present their perception as facts.
api 2y ago
We’re not talking about differing views but about flat lies. It’s basically a DDOS attack. It takes seconds especially with AI to generate bullshit but hours to debunk it. I certainly haven’t thought of a way to address that imbalance.
- thsksbd 2y ago
  Like the Steele Dossier? Or that Hunter's laptop outlining his old man's corruption was fake? What do you think are lies that should be censored and how quick are you to identify them?
  - 2four2 2y ago
    Strange agenda here. This conversation isn't about those things, and isn't about censorship.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Nobody cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s the biggest nothing-burger ever. If it actually detailed any corruption, then it would have pursued in court by now. It’s always been a complete waste of time.
    - astrange 2y ago
      One of the earliest mentions of it was on fake news sites owned by Guo Wengui claiming it had child porn on it, presumably because they'd planted some on it - the suppression was so effective that the people claiming it's real don't remember this either. IIRC the articles had very poor ideas of what Americans would find scandalous because they spent much of their time talking about how big Hunter Biden's penis was.
    - justonenote 2y ago
      Regardless of the specific case of the laptop, it is beyond naive to think that every incidence of corruption that is known about is pursued in court. Even non-political figures who are known to be corrupt will not be prosecuted or pursued because of the difficulty of securing a conviction or simply priorities and limited resources. When it comes to people to with powerful political connections, you are talking a different level of 'difficulty pursing this case'.
tw04 2y ago
> People are allowed to think and share things that make you angry. If your views aren't mainstream, there's a reason for that. China has entered the chat. Obviously HN is a western focused site, but it always fascinates me when people just assume Western ideas of freedom are just a solved problem. Those freedoms, historically speaking, are very much not just a thing we should all expect will continue in perpetuity. So statements like “your ideas lost” sound a bit childish from a global perspective. Do I hope freedom of speech continues to prevail? Absolutely. Is it just the inevitable conclusion you suggest? Not at all.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  And it’s absolutely possible that changes in technology have dramatically shifted the dynamics of the marketplace of ideas (of course this is the entire purpose of advancing technology). It is feasible that a Wild West marketplace of ideas had a tendency to select truth given the communication media from the printing press to social media, and now with social media that dynamic is weaker, nonexistent, or inverted.
throw0101c 2y ago
> No, sorry, but your ideas lost. And what about people who reject reality itself? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
> Too many people get very angry that people share things they disagree with No? We are angry that the firehouse of falsehood is making civil discourse between Americans impossible. Sneaky of you to slip that in there, new throwaway acct.
toss1 2y ago
How is this argument different from "Whichever side shouts loudest and longest wins."? Volume is not equal to facts or truth. Yes, censorship is dangerous. But the article is NOT an argument for censorship. Everyone knows the sagacious Mark Twain quote: "A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on". Social media puts that effect on rocket fuel. When some cohorts are using that to consistently and disproportionally amplify lies, it is very reasonable to add a small amount of friction, or require someone to prioritize what they repost. This does zero to stop posting lies, it only forces them to select the highest quality — to them — set to repost. It is no different from the restriction on this Hacker News site; if you post too much here, you get a message like "Please slow down, you're posting too fast.", and you cannot repost for several hours. I have not seen anyone crying "CENSORSHIP!!" over that restriction. I also doubt there exists anyone who would think that the discussion on Twitter is better than HN. So, why are you crying "CENSORSHIP!!" about a similar proposal for other social media (and be sure to address how a restriction on volume has zero restriction on any specific content)?
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  > But the article is NOT an argument for censorship. Really? It sure looks to me like it's advocating putting limits on people's ability to say things.
  - toss1 2y ago
    It is putting zero constraints on what can be said It only suggests constraining the rate of broadcasting You can go to the town square and shout all you want, you'll still be limited by how much you can enunciate in 24 hours. That is not censorship. Similarly constraining an automated system to act like physical reality is not censorship. If I constrain WHAT you say in your allotted time, THAT is censorship.
techostritch 2y ago
The narrative a lot of people seem to adopt is that the fake news debate is about limiting the types of messaging and propaganda available to two sides of a political system. And so attacking fake news is only about attacking the tools available to the other side. I think what’s wrong about this narrative is the idea that fake news is good for the people spreading it. Like I don’t think that obsessing about the Russia investigation was great for liberals and I think there’s a ton of examples of Republican infighting that is the result of people believing things that aren’t true, and just like factually so. There’s a difference between spreading all sorts of malicious opinions about LGBT; and I’m not happy about that but whatever and the recent story of a woman who got elected to the school board to get the LGBT curricula out of schools, read the whole curricula, realized that there was no LGBT curricula in schools, told her supporters how happy she was to realize that and then was viciously attacked for it. Or the guy who actually attacked a pizza restaurant, or the Romney campaign being surprised they lost in 2012, because they believed a conservative propaganda site performing intentionally biased polling to show a not favorable result. Like looking at the current American political situation, I think you could make a strong argument that fake news is worse for Republicans than it is for Democrats.
mindslight 2y ago
It's wrong to frame this topic as being about wanting "the censorship weapon" or not, when we're mostly talking about centralized tech companies boosting this tripe to "drive engagement" - the role of the censor is already being actively played by these companies! When Aunt Mildred had to click 'forward', choose the list of people she was going to bombard with her spam, left the subject line containing FwReFwFwFw, and then the sheer majority didn't even reply, those were all natural limiting factors. Now Faceboot takes mere reading as a positive act of "engagement", shows it to people it predicts will be receptive, and then concentrates activity between them creating an illusion of social proof. This ties right into your desire for tools, because tech companies don't actually want people using independent tools to access their systems. They're already giving us the tools they want us to use - poor ones designed around slowing us down, confusing our unadorned human brains, and creating a slow drip of partial accomplishment rather than letting us complete a task and move on. Attempts to even augment their tools with things like Adblock are met with a lot of grumbling and sometimes even outright blocking. Full blown third party clients (eg yt-dlp) are continually seen as a fringe thing, and churn between names/maintainers/hosts due to legal shakedowns. The nonsense of prior-restrained-based "API keys" runs roughshod over developers' thought processes. A sustainable ecosystem of independent third party clients in the mainstream app stores is essentially impossible - a wink, nod, and specious reference to trademark, DMCA, or CFAA is all it takes to get the other tech gatekeepers to collude. Unfortunately, this all points to the only way we're fixing any of this is some kind of regulation. The centralized tech companies have set up their positions at a Schelling point of individual agency, and have heartily grown into the power vacuum. Like atoms in a gas, it's impossible for us to all just individually move in the same direction at the same time, and so the only way to get a lever big enough to move them is collective action via the government, as imperfect as that is. Personally I'm in favor of antitrust enforcement that breaks up this bundling between hosting and client software (and hardware devices as well). They should be considered separate products, when developed at the same company be completely independent business units, with backroom communication (eg unpublished APIs) prohibited. I'd say this would get us 80% of the way there to having the choice of tools that don't themselves encourage the spreading of disinformation. Then additional functionality of automated filtering etc could grow organically on top of that, in a user-representing way. But for any of that to happen, the client ecosystems have to be freed first.
john-radio 2y ago
> If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you. Setting aside the inflammatory tone of your take on this - I think your argument would be strengthened by an example or two of where you're suggesting the line should be drawn - this just is not how running social media sites currently works at all. Companies can and do censor user content all the time, for better or worse. What "tough cookies"? More like tough cookies for people that don't like living in a country where a third of the population believes we're ruled by baby blood drinking reptile people.
AlienRobot 2y ago
I think the correct thing to do would be to stop sharing news. I just don't see how a site about the latest drama, crime, war, or tragedy happening at the moment anywhere on the planet or on the Internet can be good for anyone's mental health. If you asked me, I'd say more social media should strive to be like Pinterest, where people don't share their wordy opinions nobody will be better off reading, they just share pictures of things that interest them (or in many cases pictures of products they're selling). Like, if you're a gamer, which is the better site: one that keeps telling you about the latest drama among Twitch streamers, or one that just had 30 screenshots and short video clips of various games displayed on screen at the same time?
RecycledEle 2y ago
> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" Very true. I feel so sorry for the people who can not use the Scientific Method to determine the credibility of news sources. Here is what I do: I find a news story from the source that is about events close to me. Then I go over and check. I hope you try this. I test politicians the same way. I try to find video of them discussion something from my area, and then check it. If they lied about my local area, they probably lie about everything.
- RecycledEle 2y ago
  If you want to stop fake news, it only takes 1 law. You can still publish whatever you want, but if the word "news" appears in the page then you must provide links to all original sources. You claim a source told you that POTUS will have a press conference today? I want a video of the conversation you had with that source and full documentation of who spoke with who, where, when, and under what circumstances. Oh, it's an anonymous source and you put it on a web page that says it's news? That's 6 months in confinement for whoever did that. Someone will serve 6 months if it means hunting down every last stockholder. Problem solved.

yosito 2y ago

You can identify fake news to people, and unless someone from their "tribe" identifies it, they will just say that the party identifying it is fake.

throwaway115 2y ago
So then you need to come to terms with people rejecting what you want them to believe. Some people won't believe you no matter what. Does that mean you get to reach for another tool, like force, or censorship? No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people.
- croes 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway115 2y ago
    >We take away your freedom and put you in jail. The ACLU has defended literal neo-Nazis and white supremacists right to rally and share their ideas on several occasions. Sounds like you would disagree with them, and that people should be imprisoned for having disgusting and hateful ideas. Fortunately, you're wrong. Don't conflate words with actions like hurting someone. There are very narrow restrictions on speech, mostly around calls or threats of imminent violence. But those are extremely rare cases, and they're not what you are broadly describing.
    - croes 2y ago
      >that people should be imprisoned for having disgusting and hateful ideas So what about Charles Manson? >Fortunately, you're wrong Based on what? Have you counted the people who died or got hurt because someone took action because of those disgusting and hateful ideas? Or is this the kind of reasoning where something must be wrong because you don't like it. You already acknowledged there are limits in free speech so now we are just bargaining about the limits. There is no unlimited free speech. Interestingly it seems like speech is rather limited if it's about copyright than human lives.
- justonenote 2y ago
  > it means you need to accept that you don't control people. This is absolutely the correct take, but also an idea that is unconscionable to the majority of people in government and other institutions involved in setting policies today.
- drekk 2y ago
  It's not about belief or control. If you're harming the social organism by spreading verifiable falsehoods (vaccines cause autism) then you should be rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be. I can't yell fire in a theater. I'm somehow alive despite that censorship. People need to grow up.
  - throwaway115 2y ago
    Where can I read about the constitutional rights of "the social organism"?
  - justonenote 2y ago
    Do we really have to go over the history of ideas that were once considered falsehoods but are now accepted as truth? Your argument rests on the presumption that we have some kind of Oracle that can divine true information from false. > rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be It's cool that you think humans have changed in nature significantly from the time of the Inquisitions, but when you speak like this about people it's pretty clear we haven't.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people. Not wrong, but when others' mis- and ill-formed view of the world starts effecting others then some kind of action needs to happen: * https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html * https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html * https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-measles-outbreak-vaccination-1.7144915 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-measles-outbreak-vacci... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccines_and_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccines_and_autism * https://www.google.com/search?q=vaccine+autism https://www.google.com/search?q=vaccine+autism
- yosito 2y ago
  There are tools you can use when you want people to see your perspective, things like empathy and persuasion. You don't just have to fatalistically accept that people think differently than you, you can absolutely attempt to change their mind, in ethical ways.

malfist 2y ago

I don't disagree that people should learn to better recognize fake news, but when you're solution is to have the whole population change their behavior, your solution will not work. Removal of a few super spreaders is infinitely more feasible than having everyone else change their behavior

dgellow 2y ago

The majority doesn’t care, you can give the best tools to identify, they won’t trust them or ignore them

throwaway115 2y ago
You're being hyperbolic. Community Notes on X are an example of these tools, and they are not ignored or distrusted from what I've seen. If your tools are poor, make better tools. But also, as a first principle, accept that some people won't believe what you want them to believe, no matter what. That doesn't mean you get to start trying to control them, because you got frustrated.
- croes 2y ago
  Would you trust community Notes on Truth Social? They aren't a tool to identify fake news just an additional information layer which you either trust or xou don't. >If your tools are poor, make better tools If you are a bad painter buy better brushes. You solution doesn't give the people the tools you still have just a source which claims to show what's true. The real tool is the user himself using his brain. But that's hard to achive.
  - kylebenzle 2y ago
    Exactly, Twitter tends to be liberal and so their community responses also tend to be liberal.
  - anileated 2y ago
    If you trust community notes on Twitter, I have news for you (https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5080048 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5080048). Community notes are used as just another channel to spread misinformation, but this time under convenient guise of truth, and that is why it is a flawed design.
    - croes 2y ago
      I know, but I needed an example where the tool as such is ca. 100% useless to show it's not a real tool but just a additional layer of some authority you need to trust.

bluepizza 2y ago

We provide everyone with way too many hard to use tools, just because we don't want to stop the problem at the source. A normal adult needs to use to many tools and chase so many different types of education by themselves, off the top of my mind: financial, real estate, health, technology, purchasing habits, utilities providers, news and misinformation, nutrition, commonly applied scams. Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal, and prosecute those that do it.

sokoloff 2y ago
> Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal How do you define this in law? Many of us tap-tap on keyboards and charge people thousands of dollars per week for that. Are we taking advantage of them? We then watch as the staff who works hard to clean our office buildings make 1/10th of what we make. Are we taking advantage of them? If someone comes to my house on a weekend and charges me double the normal price to unclog my toilet or get my heat working again, am I being taken advantage of? If there’s a shortage of generators in an area and I drive in a truckload of them from hundreds of miles away and make them available at a profit to myself, am I taking advantage? Different people will have legitimately differing opinions on questions above. “Make it illegal to take advantage of people via laws” is much easier to say than to do.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
My litmus test is what advertisers, marketers and salesmen can do, as the limit of that is where it turns into illegal scams. Yes, I claim this is a continuum, the legal line dividing shrewd business from fraud is arbitrary, and IMO placed way too far towards the "fraud" end, i.e. allowing too much.

sobkas 2y ago

> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you. When you teach people to recognise fake news they will be able to recognise your fake news. What you want is to cut people from enemy fake news (or truth, they are enemy, it doesn't matter) so they will believe everything you say while enemy can't influence them.

thriftwy 2y ago
The Internet was created with the implicit idea that everybody brings their stuff (including news) to the table and then the best one wins. Back then the US/Free World ones were clearly the best. If you want nobody in your country to read any news procured by China/Russia, this kind of defeats the original idea. You've now built something else entirely - like a glorified teletext or minitel.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Ye I think this is the underlying problem. The Man® want us to only read his fake news to be able to get away with whatever they wanna push. One fundamental precondition for a functional democracy is the right to be wrong, since that is judged arbitrary anyways. The problem with manipulation stems from algorithmic ad feeds anyways. E.g. chronological 'my friends only' feeds did not have that problem.
throwaway115 2y ago
I don't want that, but I see your point. I would rather our population have a healthy immune system where bad ideas just don't survive, than to have us live as Bubble Boy, cut off from the rest of the world forever.
- atmavatar 2y ago
  Alas, I fear even if we had a perfect utopia where it was easy to give everyone the choice between fake news that reinforces their beliefs and unopinionated, factual news, it won't turn out any different than placing a bunch of hungry children in a room where there's a table of sweets and a table of nutritious vegetables. Hell, even if it was adults given some training for self-control, the vast majority of them will dip into the sweets table from time to time. People are really good at rationalization, such that even if they know up-front which choice was fake news and which was not, I bet you'd similarly observe a significant fraction (if not majority or super majority) of people choosing the fake news to feel better. Sadly, I'm unaware of any real solutions to the fake news problem that don't make things even worse.

biophysboy 2y ago

I don’t disagree, but my worry is that this approach will be as effective as diet/exercise has been for obesity

DavidPiper 2y ago
"The solution can't be personal responsibility. But also the solution is personal responsibility." It's something I keep coming back to, and I'm really not sure how to resolve it.
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  My opinion on that dilemma: some problems are so widespread that it makes more sense to deal with them collectively, aiming to cut them down at the root. We usually appoint people to deal with with them because it's more effective than everyone having to act in concert. Those people are called "politicians". Do those people do a good job? Kinda - they tend to get everything uniformly wrong and sometimes they really screw something up, but in general they land more often than not in reasonable compromises. And while your Senator may be a corrupt idiot, the people in their staff may be okay and steer them generally in a sane direction.

kylebenzle 2y ago

[flagged]

jasonjayr 2y ago

There is a stark difference between "fake news" and "difference of opinion that I don't agree with". "fake news" typically amounts to false rumors, amplifying unprovable/unsubstantiated claims. That's what needs to stop, and what is greatly damaging discourse. I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts.

throwaway115 2y ago
>I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts. Opinion a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
- epgui 2y ago
  Opinions don't need to be supported by facts or based on facts. They do need to be compatible with factual reality, otherwise they're called delusions.
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    Unfortunately, phantasms[1] and mass delusions are also very much possible. Increasingly, opinions don't need to be compatible with factual reality to be believed. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/pyfhzb/please_explain_to_me_what_a_phantasm_exactly_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/pyfhzb/please_e... (Sorry for the Reddit link, it's the most succinct explanation I could find)
    - epgui 2y ago
      That’s true… and it’s perfectly compatible with what I wrote.
  - tanseydavid 2y ago
    Delusional people do not speak in terms of opinion they present their perception as facts.

api 2y ago

We’re not talking about differing views but about flat lies. It’s basically a DDOS attack. It takes seconds especially with AI to generate bullshit but hours to debunk it. I certainly haven’t thought of a way to address that imbalance.

thsksbd 2y ago
Like the Steele Dossier? Or that Hunter's laptop outlining his old man's corruption was fake? What do you think are lies that should be censored and how quick are you to identify them?
- 2four2 2y ago
  Strange agenda here. This conversation isn't about those things, and isn't about censorship.
- Nursie 2y ago
  Nobody cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s the biggest nothing-burger ever. If it actually detailed any corruption, then it would have pursued in court by now. It’s always been a complete waste of time.
  - astrange 2y ago
    One of the earliest mentions of it was on fake news sites owned by Guo Wengui claiming it had child porn on it, presumably because they'd planted some on it - the suppression was so effective that the people claiming it's real don't remember this either. IIRC the articles had very poor ideas of what Americans would find scandalous because they spent much of their time talking about how big Hunter Biden's penis was.
  - justonenote 2y ago
    Regardless of the specific case of the laptop, it is beyond naive to think that every incidence of corruption that is known about is pursued in court. Even non-political figures who are known to be corrupt will not be prosecuted or pursued because of the difficulty of securing a conviction or simply priorities and limited resources. When it comes to people to with powerful political connections, you are talking a different level of 'difficulty pursing this case'.

tw04 2y ago

> People are allowed to think and share things that make you angry. If your views aren't mainstream, there's a reason for that. China has entered the chat. Obviously HN is a western focused site, but it always fascinates me when people just assume Western ideas of freedom are just a solved problem. Those freedoms, historically speaking, are very much not just a thing we should all expect will continue in perpetuity. So statements like “your ideas lost” sound a bit childish from a global perspective. Do I hope freedom of speech continues to prevail? Absolutely. Is it just the inevitable conclusion you suggest? Not at all.

llamaimperative 2y ago
And it’s absolutely possible that changes in technology have dramatically shifted the dynamics of the marketplace of ideas (of course this is the entire purpose of advancing technology). It is feasible that a Wild West marketplace of ideas had a tendency to select truth given the communication media from the printing press to social media, and now with social media that dynamic is weaker, nonexistent, or inverted.

throw0101c 2y ago

> No, sorry, but your ideas lost. And what about people who reject reality itself? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

> Too many people get very angry that people share things they disagree with No? We are angry that the firehouse of falsehood is making civil discourse between Americans impossible. Sneaky of you to slip that in there, new throwaway acct.

toss1 2y ago

How is this argument different from "Whichever side shouts loudest and longest wins."? Volume is not equal to facts or truth. Yes, censorship is dangerous. But the article is NOT an argument for censorship. Everyone knows the sagacious Mark Twain quote: "A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on". Social media puts that effect on rocket fuel. When some cohorts are using that to consistently and disproportionally amplify lies, it is very reasonable to add a small amount of friction, or require someone to prioritize what they repost. This does zero to stop posting lies, it only forces them to select the highest quality — to them — set to repost. It is no different from the restriction on this Hacker News site; if you post too much here, you get a message like "Please slow down, you're posting too fast.", and you cannot repost for several hours. I have not seen anyone crying "CENSORSHIP!!" over that restriction. I also doubt there exists anyone who would think that the discussion on Twitter is better than HN. So, why are you crying "CENSORSHIP!!" about a similar proposal for other social media (and be sure to address how a restriction on volume has zero restriction on any specific content)?

tbrownaw 2y ago
> But the article is NOT an argument for censorship. Really? It sure looks to me like it's advocating putting limits on people's ability to say things.
- toss1 2y ago
  It is putting zero constraints on what can be said It only suggests constraining the rate of broadcasting You can go to the town square and shout all you want, you'll still be limited by how much you can enunciate in 24 hours. That is not censorship. Similarly constraining an automated system to act like physical reality is not censorship. If I constrain WHAT you say in your allotted time, THAT is censorship.

techostritch 2y ago

The narrative a lot of people seem to adopt is that the fake news debate is about limiting the types of messaging and propaganda available to two sides of a political system. And so attacking fake news is only about attacking the tools available to the other side. I think what’s wrong about this narrative is the idea that fake news is good for the people spreading it. Like I don’t think that obsessing about the Russia investigation was great for liberals and I think there’s a ton of examples of Republican infighting that is the result of people believing things that aren’t true, and just like factually so. There’s a difference between spreading all sorts of malicious opinions about LGBT; and I’m not happy about that but whatever and the recent story of a woman who got elected to the school board to get the LGBT curricula out of schools, read the whole curricula, realized that there was no LGBT curricula in schools, told her supporters how happy she was to realize that and then was viciously attacked for it. Or the guy who actually attacked a pizza restaurant, or the Romney campaign being surprised they lost in 2012, because they believed a conservative propaganda site performing intentionally biased polling to show a not favorable result. Like looking at the current American political situation, I think you could make a strong argument that fake news is worse for Republicans than it is for Democrats.

mindslight 2y ago

It's wrong to frame this topic as being about wanting "the censorship weapon" or not, when we're mostly talking about centralized tech companies boosting this tripe to "drive engagement" - the role of the censor is already being actively played by these companies! When Aunt Mildred had to click 'forward', choose the list of people she was going to bombard with her spam, left the subject line containing FwReFwFwFw, and then the sheer majority didn't even reply, those were all natural limiting factors. Now Faceboot takes mere reading as a positive act of "engagement", shows it to people it predicts will be receptive, and then concentrates activity between them creating an illusion of social proof. This ties right into your desire for tools, because tech companies don't actually want people using independent tools to access their systems. They're already giving us the tools they want us to use - poor ones designed around slowing us down, confusing our unadorned human brains, and creating a slow drip of partial accomplishment rather than letting us complete a task and move on. Attempts to even augment their tools with things like Adblock are met with a lot of grumbling and sometimes even outright blocking. Full blown third party clients (eg yt-dlp) are continually seen as a fringe thing, and churn between names/maintainers/hosts due to legal shakedowns. The nonsense of prior-restrained-based "API keys" runs roughshod over developers' thought processes. A sustainable ecosystem of independent third party clients in the mainstream app stores is essentially impossible - a wink, nod, and specious reference to trademark, DMCA, or CFAA is all it takes to get the other tech gatekeepers to collude. Unfortunately, this all points to the only way we're fixing any of this is some kind of regulation. The centralized tech companies have set up their positions at a Schelling point of individual agency, and have heartily grown into the power vacuum. Like atoms in a gas, it's impossible for us to all just individually move in the same direction at the same time, and so the only way to get a lever big enough to move them is collective action via the government, as imperfect as that is. Personally I'm in favor of antitrust enforcement that breaks up this bundling between hosting and client software (and hardware devices as well). They should be considered separate products, when developed at the same company be completely independent business units, with backroom communication (eg unpublished APIs) prohibited. I'd say this would get us 80% of the way there to having the choice of tools that don't themselves encourage the spreading of disinformation. Then additional functionality of automated filtering etc could grow organically on top of that, in a user-representing way. But for any of that to happen, the client ecosystems have to be freed first.

john-radio 2y ago

> If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you. Setting aside the inflammatory tone of your take on this - I think your argument would be strengthened by an example or two of where you're suggesting the line should be drawn - this just is not how running social media sites currently works at all. Companies can and do censor user content all the time, for better or worse. What "tough cookies"? More like tough cookies for people that don't like living in a country where a third of the population believes we're ruled by baby blood drinking reptile people.

AlienRobot 2y ago

I think the correct thing to do would be to stop sharing news. I just don't see how a site about the latest drama, crime, war, or tragedy happening at the moment anywhere on the planet or on the Internet can be good for anyone's mental health. If you asked me, I'd say more social media should strive to be like Pinterest, where people don't share their wordy opinions nobody will be better off reading, they just share pictures of things that interest them (or in many cases pictures of products they're selling). Like, if you're a gamer, which is the better site: one that keeps telling you about the latest drama among Twitch streamers, or one that just had 30 screenshots and short video clips of various games displayed on screen at the same time?

RecycledEle 2y ago

> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" Very true. I feel so sorry for the people who can not use the Scientific Method to determine the credibility of news sources. Here is what I do: I find a news story from the source that is about events close to me. Then I go over and check. I hope you try this. I test politicians the same way. I try to find video of them discussion something from my area, and then check it. If they lied about my local area, they probably lie about everything.

RecycledEle 2y ago
If you want to stop fake news, it only takes 1 law. You can still publish whatever you want, but if the word "news" appears in the page then you must provide links to all original sources. You claim a source told you that POTUS will have a press conference today? I want a video of the conversation you had with that source and full documentation of who spoke with who, where, when, and under what circumstances. Oh, it's an anonymous source and you put it on a web page that says it's news? That's 6 months in confinement for whoever did that. Someone will serve 6 months if it means hunting down every last stockholder. Problem solved.