Asymmetrical warfare. Truth can never win. Fact checking is akin to boiling the ocean.
Just require attribution and real names.
Then ban algorithmic newsfeeds, targeted advertising, and bots.
Sure, let the Freedom Speeches™ trolls keep their conspiracy theories and hoaxes. Anything approaching omission will trigger the cancel culture keyboard commandos. And who needs that heart ache?
But ffs stop promoting it. And if it's not signed with a real name, don't pass it off as any thing more than it is.
PS- I'm open towards banning likes and retweets. I haven't dug into the data, but I'm reasonably sure they're part of the dopamine addiction too. And if these obvious, common sense, proven remedies are not enough, start adding other frictions to the feedback loops.
I think another underrated solution may be geographically restricted posting. Someone else was talking about massive amounts of trolls flooding local groups that try to inform people about the fire, so why not have a feature where communities are effectively GPS locked down to some radius.
It's worth noting that the "misinformation" cited by Facebook regards the attribution of the fires to particular groups, and that they are not disputing that some of the fires may have been intentional. They are not claiming that all of the fires are natural, or that people have not been arrested for arson, just that those arrested are not shown to be associated with the particular groups that are being accused. This page has details on six individuals who have in fact been arrested for setting recent West Coast fires: https://thatoregonlife.com/2020/09/signs-in-oregon-fire-zone....
We are about 10 miles from the fire and about 5 miles from people who have been evacuated.
Frustratingly, one of the best sources of information about the fires has been community meetings and content posted on Facebook by the agencies involved. Often those same community meetings and PSAs about the fire have been bracketed by non-stop streams of people reposting this same bullshit about the fires.
In general, I think posting siloed content is really bad policy by government agencies, but in this case it's particularly bad. I don't see this as a failure of the fire agencies—it's not their job to be a platform for delivering content. The problem is our government lacks effective channels for delivering this content outside of these silos.
This trouble for Facebook and well anyone attempting to combat misinformation is that the falsehood can be created in seconds. The clever ones are designed to be hard to fully disprove, or at least seem that way.
Everyone else has to then scramble and spend hours, days or more gathering evidence to prove lies are incorrect. It's a denial of truth attack that is impossible to police fairly on a time scale that matters.
Facebook removes lots of truthful stuff, so that says nothing about the validity of it. It does tell us that Facebook employees dislike the information.
More likely that they'll just become cynical and stop believing everything altogether. Marking a post as a lie doesn't educate the user how, or give them the tools they need to independently confirm the truth of a post.
"contradicted" by maga / qanon accounts. there have even been conspiracies where people shared old videos of drones that are "apparently" used to set the fires "on purpose" (which is done strategically in some areas). All the news I have seen of this refuting the evidence points to sites like gatewaypundint and other rightwing garbage.
If anybody really wanted to know "who started the fires," that's easy: It was you, driving that car of yours, running that air conditioner, heater, stove, fridge, washer/dryer, buying those products, living your life. Not a mystery. But nobody wants to know that. Consider each downvote a confirmation of that last sentence.
If carbon dioxide brought the bark beetle to our shores, then forced the federal and state agencies to not treat the resulting megatons of dried out trees as the emergency they were, then ok.
But you're going to have to explain how that works, because I'm not seeing it.
Sure, climate change is a real and increasingly urgent problem. And you can make a case that it made the situation worse; fine.
But the bark beetle was both necessary, and sufficient, to cause the crisis we're seeing. I've seen estimates of 30% kill rates in Western forests over the past five years.
You do realize the Native Americans used controlled burns for many centuries, as a way to prevent mass fires? The government hasn't been doing that, and the amount of combustible material on the ground has accumulated to dangerous levels as a result. Just some food for thought.
But the oil companies that lobbied to prevent any action on climate change, to make sure oil subsidies remain and renewable subsidies don't come to pass, that funded FUD research on climate change when their own confidential, internal research said it was a problem, they are completely blameless.
It is individual consumers, whose every attempt at organized action has been sabotaged, that are to blame.
Political extremists did not start the fires. But decades of the political status quo in both dominant parties led to mismanagement that led to the current situation. Are any of the "corrections" correcting that omission?
[+] [-] specialist|5 years ago|reply
Just require attribution and real names.
Then ban algorithmic newsfeeds, targeted advertising, and bots.
Sure, let the Freedom Speeches™ trolls keep their conspiracy theories and hoaxes. Anything approaching omission will trigger the cancel culture keyboard commandos. And who needs that heart ache?
But ffs stop promoting it. And if it's not signed with a real name, don't pass it off as any thing more than it is.
PS- I'm open towards banning likes and retweets. I haven't dug into the data, but I'm reasonably sure they're part of the dopamine addiction too. And if these obvious, common sense, proven remedies are not enough, start adding other frictions to the feedback loops.
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
Otherwise agreed with all the points.
[+] [-] nkurz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
Frustratingly, one of the best sources of information about the fires has been community meetings and content posted on Facebook by the agencies involved. Often those same community meetings and PSAs about the fire have been bracketed by non-stop streams of people reposting this same bullshit about the fires.
In general, I think posting siloed content is really bad policy by government agencies, but in this case it's particularly bad. I don't see this as a failure of the fire agencies—it's not their job to be a platform for delivering content. The problem is our government lacks effective channels for delivering this content outside of these silos.
[+] [-] jasonlfunk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuesdayrain|5 years ago|reply
I don't get how Facebook can say with certainty this is misinformation? It's information that hasn't been verified. There is an important difference.
[+] [-] phatfish|5 years ago|reply
Everyone else has to then scramble and spend hours, days or more gathering evidence to prove lies are incorrect. It's a denial of truth attack that is impossible to police fairly on a time scale that matters.
[+] [-] souprock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbecker|5 years ago|reply
Such as? Examples would be appreciated.
[+] [-] panpanna|5 years ago|reply
Mark them as lies and don't let the writer modify or delete them.
Once people see they have been upvoting lies, some might reconsider next time.
[+] [-] Nuzzerino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hubbabubbarex|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cpr|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|5 years ago|reply
e.g.:
https://nitter.net/AwakenedOutlaw/status/1305234813234933760...
https://nitter.net/sandy1schneider/status/130472396024075878...
https://nitter.net/fukushimaexpos2/status/130454846635014963...
[+] [-] rdiddly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samatman|5 years ago|reply
But you're going to have to explain how that works, because I'm not seeing it.
Sure, climate change is a real and increasingly urgent problem. And you can make a case that it made the situation worse; fine.
But the bark beetle was both necessary, and sufficient, to cause the crisis we're seeing. I've seen estimates of 30% kill rates in Western forests over the past five years.
[+] [-] Nuzzerino|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbecker|5 years ago|reply
It is individual consumers, whose every attempt at organized action has been sabotaged, that are to blame.
Some sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/20/oil-company...
https://graphics.latimes.com/oil-operations/
[+] [-] drewcoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knaq|5 years ago|reply
Here we have a distraught witness: https://www.bitchute.com/video/tNgWGZBxPtGx/
[+] [-] amanaplanacanal|5 years ago|reply
Also, even if her claim is true, there is no evidence that the people involved had any affiliation with antifa or proud boys.