this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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Simply yet more proof of Twitter being a terrible platform.
Social media, not just Twitter. The key issue here is human nature. These platforms are just the force multiplier. Misinformation is alive and well on Lemmy as well. It just flies under the radar for the most part because it doesn't go against your prior beliefs.
Examples of misinformation on Lemmy?
Tankie stuff
"Don't vote" propaganda stuff
For a relatively tame one, just yesterday there was this idea making the rounds that Cohen saw jail time for the "exact same crime" that Trump did, so we could expect jail time for Trump. This despite the fact that they actually did totally different crimes.
In my experience so far, lemmings are the dumbest and most naive userbase of any social media I've ever been on. But then I left Facebook back in like '07 so I didn't see the worst of it
But where? I haven't seen anything of this sort personally and definitely not that specific one. I do think Lemmy is very hive-mindey in my xp, especially towards hating AI and crypto etc. usually fairly mindlessly as well so I was disappointed, plus shitjustworks has the dumbest people overall
Just searched in this thread for "same crime"
https://lemmy.world/comment/10356342
https://lemmy.world/comment/10356455
Oh yeah don't trust randos in comments obviously, that is always misinfo or opinions on any platform. I thought you meant like highly upvoted article posts everywhere.
We are more than just Lemmy now - there's Kbin, its fork Mbin, and others like it that are integrating Mastodon into the mix as well.
Maybe Fedizen?
But are we being misrepresented by a documentary crew this time?
I'm curious if there's any software way to reduce it here. Lemmy admins aren't enslaved by profit like most social networks.
I don't think there's a silver bullet for it. What works is critical thinking and humility about what you don't know. One good rule of thumb is to keep in mind that things are virtually always nuanced and complicated. When ever someone presents something as simple, straight forward, black and white etc. an alarm should go off. Even when what is being said might not technically be incorrent it's still often just one side of the story. There's always the other side to it as well. Nothing/no one is all bad or all good. If one stands for a cause but can't make a single good faith argument against their own view about it then they're not thinking honestly about it.
Sure, but I'd love a software way to reduce it even if there's no silver bullet. All the critical thinking in the world won't make me immune to propaganda, and realistically the average person isn't going to change any time soon.
If there's always another side, then there's another side to your "there's always another side" argument, so perhaps there are some one-sided topics like "does something exist".
Restricting new accounts.
Yeah that's another rule-of-thumb: Never say never or always, there's always an exception. I'm also fully aware of the irony of that whole sentence.
Yeah I get what you mean. Would be nice to have but I don't know how such an add-on would work in practice. I imagine that rather than filtering it out it would instead need to be something that adds a correction/context next to it. There's usually atleast a kernel of truth even in misinformation so simply just hiding it doesn't seem optimal either. An interesting point about free-speech I heard recently was that by silencing the fringes it leaves the rest of us ignorant to what views people hold as well as prevents us from hearing all the evidence that they're wrong. Generally I'm not against misinformation on places like Lemmy but what I do wish is that the top comment on each thread was the one providing nuance, context and correction. This place just doesn't encourage that. There's a set of accepted beliefs and viewpoints and anything going against that is just met with hostility. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful psychological phenomenom and people don't like their beliefs challenged.
Maybe an LLM fed with the political science equivalent of IPCC reports. Just need to get those consensual reports written!