Losing Trust in the Internet

[vlan121]

The rise of AI websites and generated content pushes me rn to a point where I am not certain that a given fact is a fact itself and AI did not made it up. It becomes more and more indistinguishable and less trustworthy.

How can I be sure that things haven't been made up? The only thing left to do is consult books from before the AI boom. How do you do it?

[rfarley04]

Sources from 30 years ago are more reliable than 30 days ago: pithandpip.com/blog/why-write-about-tech-history

[mytailorisrich]

The internet was never trustworthy. Specific websites backed by reputatable organisations with strong editorial rules may be trustworthy within reason.

[7222aafdcf68cfe]

Unfortunately, these will be subject to bit rot eventually.

Information on the internet currently does not have the longevity of books, yet books do not have the breadth and depth that can be found on the internet.

Along with curation, this is still an unsolved problem imo.

[_jsmh]

Another minor note: in my opinion, and it seems in Elon's opinion too, spam and generating lies and so on comes down to cost. If this cost is increased high enough so it becomes uneconomical for bots to pay it, then they won't pay and they'll stop. I hope it will remain economical for humans to post.

It'd be a grim future, in my opinion, if posting online requires identification. Some type of work is done better when it doesn't receive external validation.

This doesn't seem to conflict with freedom of speech. It's free to say whatever you want, but there seems to be a cost in getting others to hear what you have to say. Consuming one's attention seems to have a cost. Although freedom of speech in the form of hosting an online blog has a small cost too, it's not exactly 100% free.

[_jsmh]

I follow content from accounts that seem to consistently post facts.

I try to understand what is actually being stated instead of what is implied; facts vs opinions.

I wouldn't be surprised if falsity starts to get penalized. Elon said something along the lines of Grok will start to rank content based on whether its true.

Also built a system that prevents posting things that are made up. Maybe posting lies should carry a penalty, where you deposit something to lose if it's later discovered that you told a lie.

[vlan121]

> I follow content from accounts that seem to consistently post facts. How do you really distinguish that? Sourcing is a way to proof your facts. But creating a net of sources is in times of AI not hard. If there are timestamps one factor could be time stamps, and I really found sources that all have been published within a week or a month making it shady.

>I try to understand what is actually being stated instead of what is implied; facts vs opinion That requires that you understand fully to implication, how do you do this in areas that you don't have strong background knowledge?

>I wouldn't be surprised if falsity starts to get penalized. Elon said Grok will start to rank content based on whether its true. That would be a great step.

> Also built a system that prevents posting things that are made up. Maybe posting lies should carry a penalty, where you deposit something to lose if you told a lie. We must be careful here that a social credit system is not created through the back door.