If we want to go the route of the Responsibility of the Individual: Resolve to not get your political etc. news from social media. Draw a line for yourself: cool to get gaming news from random influencers online? Probably. News about global events? At this point might be better for most people’s mental health to ignore them and focus more locally. However, read how to read a book, make your best effort at finding a reputable news organization and check those for news if you must have them. On same vein, if you don’t read at least some article about an event being discussed on social media, DON’T COMMENT. Don’t engage with that post. If it really grabs at you, go find an article about it from a trusted source, and depending on how much it animates you, try to get a bigger picture of the event. Assume that vast majority of ALL CONTENT online is currently incentivized to engage you - to capture your attention, which is actually the most valuable asset you have. Where you put your attention will define how you feel about your life. It’s highly advicable to put it where you feel love.
Responsibility of the Collective: Moving in hierarchies, we can start demanding that social media moderators (or whatever passes for those in any given site) prevent misinformation as much as possible. Try to only join communities that have mods that do this. Failing that, demand social media platforms prevent misinformation. Failing that, we can demand the government does more to prevent misinformation. All of those solutions have significant issues, one of them being they are all very incentivized to capture the attenttion of as many people as possible. Doesn’t matter what the exact motivation is - it could be a geneinly good one. A news organization uses social media tactics to get the views so that their actually very factual and dilligently compiled articles get the spread. Or, they could be looking to drive their political agenda - which they necessarily do anyway because desire to be factual and as neutral as possible is a stance as well. One that may run afoul of the interests of some government that doesn’t value freedom of press - which is very dangerous and you need to think hard for yourself how you feel about the idea of the government limiting what kind of information you can access. For the purposes of making this shorter, you can regard massive social media platforms as virtual governments too. In fact, it would be a good idea in general.
The thing with misinformation is that many people who talk about it subtly think that they are above it themselves. They’re thinking that they know they’re not subject to propaganda and manipulation but it’s the other poor fools that need to be protected from it. It’s the Qanon and Antivaxxers. But you know better, you know how to dig deeper into massively complicated global topics and find out what the true and right opinion about them is. You can’t. Not even if we weren’t in the middle of multiple fucking information wars. You’d do well to focus on what you can know for sure, in your own experience. If you don’t like the idea of individual responsibility though, because “most people aren’t going to do it” - your best bet at getting a collective response is a group of individuals coming together under the same ideal. It’ll happen sooner or later anyway and there’s going to be plenty of suffering before either way.
we can start demanding that social media moderators (or whatever passes for those in any given site) prevent misinformation as much as possible.
Yeah, but how are you expecting moderators to determine what is and isn’t misinformation?
That’s one of the many issues with expecting a collective resolution. Question is: why do people feel they need to be able to discuss issues way beyond their understanding and personal experience online with others who also don’t know much about it? If actually done well, moderation is a full time job but nobody is interested in paying a bunch of online jannies to clean their space.
That’s why I favor individual responsibility, and opting out of the possibility of being exposed to (or perpetuating) misinformation. Maybe in the future we can have forums for verified experts of a field, where regular people can have discussions with them and ask questions etc. But these would be moderated places where you do need to bring proof and sound arguments, not emotionally charged headlines.
The stories and information posted on social media are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted as fact.
I’ve tried a lot and the problem is that the people are entrenched in their beliefs. They are in irrational states of mind on social media, and you can’t rationally talk to people in that state of mind.
The most successful I’ve had is simply the Socratic method. Remain calm, simply ask open ended questions which are designed to just make them question their tightly held beliefs. Why are cities less safe, why do you feel this, etc. however even I find they will often just get angry at that even.
Ultimately, it’s not social media which will win minds. It’s in the open. I’ve had more luck meeting people casually in bars and talking to them vs on a keyboard
Unfortunately, I believe that social media does influence people’s decisions very much. If that weren’t the case, criminals like Trump could never be elected president, and 20-25% of the people in my home country wouldn’t vote for open Nazis.
Nevertheless, thank you for your valuable contribution: In addition to technical possibilities, I am also interested in how to deal with people who do not accept rational arguments - the Socratic method is probably the best way to make a point with them.
I just wanna know: What do you do when talking to a friend IRL, face to face, and they tell you something that isn’t true?
While there may aftually be people trying to push an agenda, I suspect 90% or more people who “spread misinformation online” are just regular old idiots.
People don’t suddenly stop being people just because they have a computer and anonimity. And a lot of people are just misinformed.
Best way to stop misinformation online? Same as it is offline: Through better fucking education.
I say “huh. I hadn’t heard that one. Let me look it up. … Ohh no, that turned out to be fake. It’s getting so hard to tell these days. Just the other day I was reading…” And then start rambling about another topic. It prevents them from sitting with the uncomfortable feeling of being an idiot.
Teach people how to cite appropriately.
We learned how to do it in middle school, but I can tell most of my adult peers either didn’t pay attention or forgot.
Media literacy is an old and important topic. Are you asking for an introduction to it?
Hardly an issue on Lemmy?
Or does it just feel that way when everyone around you has the same views?
[misinformation] is hardly an issue on this platform […]
In my opinion, that statement of yours is, ironically, responsible for why there may be an issue with misinformation. You state it with certainty, yet you provide no source to back up your claim. It is my belief that this sort of conjecture is at the source of misinformation issues.
What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media? […]
Regarding my own content: I do my best to cite any claim that I make, no matter how trivial. If I make a statement for which I lack confidence in its veracity, I do my best to convey that uncertainty. I do my best to convey explicitly whether a statement is a joke, or sarcasm.
Fundamentally, my approach to this issue is based on this quote:
Rationality is not a character trait, it’s a process. If you fool yourself into believing that you’re rational by default, you open yourself up to the most irrational thinking. [1]
Regarding the content of others: If I come across something that I believe to be false, I try to politely respond to it with a sufficiently and honestly cited statement explaining why I think it is false. If I come across something of unknown veracity/clarity, I try to politely challenge the individual responsible to clarify their intent/meaning.
For clarity, I have no evidence to support that what I’m doing is an effective means to this end, but I want to believe that it’s helping in at least some small way.
References
- Type: Comment. Author: “@The8BitPianist”. Publisher: [Type: Post (Video). Title: “On These Questions, Smarter People Do Worse”. Author: “Veritasium” (“@veritasium”). Publisher: YouTube. Published: 2024-11-04T16:48:03Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno.]. Published: 2024-11-04T09:06:26Z. Accessed: 2025-03-29T07:48Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno&lc=Ugy6vV7Z3EeFHkdfbHl4AaABAg.
What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media?
This problem is hardly an issue on this platform.
LOLOL – This platform is just as bad as Reddit for misinformation. It’s usually silly shit, but it’s almost always 90% truth laced with 10% lie. The fact that you believe it’s somehow immune to this is just testament to how hard it is for people to see this kind of thing clearly when it’s “on their side”. Problem is, any time it’s called out, people get massively downvoted for it, so people have stopped calling it out.
Do you have any examples?
As a mod for a couple of the biggest communities… gestures to everything
Easily the one I see the most is Trump talking about “they rigged the election and now I’m here.” – I’m pointing out this one specifically, because any dunderhead dipshit knows from context what he’s talking about, but lemmy absolutely dives into the shallow end with it…
He’s clearly making the claim that Dems rigged the 2020 election, and because of that, he’s president in 2024 when … I dunno - whatever 2 events are happening. (Fifa or some shit?) But EVERY fucking time on Lemmy it’s like “See he’s admitting he rigged the election!” and everyone just meep meeps into agreeance.
That’s just one off the top of my head, and that’s with blocking most politics-based subs. If lemmy can’t even read or gather context from a sentence correctly – There’s no hope for the world.
Could the lemmings be referring to the old trope where some loudmouth (usually a conservative) bangs on about an issue with some minority group ad nauseum and then some time later it turns out they were actually a perpetrator of the thing they banged on about, ie every accusation is an admission of guilt?
In this case, no - comments in these usually directly infer that he’s saying that the rigged election was his team. There’s no mistaking it. They aren’t pointing at the “every accusation is a confession” bit that conservatives usually do, but many of them have commented things like “this is a direct confession, jail him now!” sadly, unironically.
While I agree the 2024 election definitely had fraud, and they’re further attempting to now outright rig the midterms, the particular video I’m referring to wasn’t the direct confession that some of these morons think it is.
And the problem also resides in the fact that this is only a single example…of many…
It honestly just depends on how many steps you want. You’re going to have to figure out the logistics of taking them, first of all. Do you want to take a premade set of steps or would you rather mold/cast them onsite?
Obviously concrete is heavy af, so if you are going to precast them, you might consider using less steps. The more steps you add, the heavier its going to be. Of course, this isn’t an issue if you have a heavy duty vehicle with a lift.
Also, do you want rails on them? That will take extra time to set them in place.
Some examples i would recommend would be something like these.
Or maybe this
Misinformation is part of the nature of social media and can’t be fixed. Stupid people are stupid. There are A LOT of them on social media. The dishonest take advantage of the stupid to spread misinformation. The only way to counteract it is to have gatekeeping, which will crush the user count and block out the biggest users, and network effect will funnel most of the rest into the biggest. (i.e. the one with the most lenient gatekeeping)
The only hope is that people realize how stupid, unrepresentative, and unsuitable social media discourse is. It’s a place to find funny pictures of cats and boobs. Looking to it for anything serious, or pretending what you see there is representative of anything, is pointless at best and likely harmful.
This problem is hardly an issue on this platform.
And this is the problem.
I see objectively misleading, clickbait headlines and articles from bad (eg not recommended by Wikipedia) sources float to the top of Lemmy all the time.
I call them out, but it seems mods are uninterested in enforcing more strict information hygiene.
Step 1 is teaching journalism and social media hygiene as a dedicated class in school, or on social media… And, well, the US is kinda past that being possible :/.
There might be hope for the rest of the world.
Hey, just wanted to say I’m always grateful when someone calls out posts not linking to proper sources. Your doing good work, thanks!
Note that Wikipedia is not a proper source.
bad (eg not recommended by Wikipedia)
If you want to know why misinformation is so prominent, the fact that you think this is a good standard is a big part of it.
Step 1 is teaching journalism and social media hygiene as a dedicated class in school
And will those classes be teaching “Wikipedia is the indisputable rock of factuality, the holy Scripture from which truth flows”?
It’s not of course, but it’s a good start. Certainly good enough to use as a quick but fallible reference:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
As I heard someone else here quote, perfect is the enemy of good.
It’s not of course, but it’s a good start. Certainly good enough to use as a quick but fallible reference:
No, it really isn’t. The fact that Wikipedia has been arbitrarily vested with such supreme authority to be the default source of truth by so many people is a big part of why misinformation is so common. Back in my day, even high schoolers were taught not to do that.
Yes, I remember too. We were specifically told not to use Wikipedia.
Then information hygiene went to shit. Now it’s a rare oasis in the current landscape.
Look, I’m not saying to start referencing Wikipedia in scholarly journals or papers. But it’s more accessible than some JSTOR database and way above average, and more of the population using it would be a wonderful thing. The vast majority of the time, Wikipedia is not the source of misinformation/disinformation in this world.
Then information hygiene went to shit. Now it’s a rare oasis in the current landscape.
It went to shit because people started treating low quality sources like Wikipedia as “a rare oasis”.
The vast majority of the time, Wikipedia is not the source of misinformation/disinformation in this world.
Are you sure about that?
…You’re kidding, right?
I’m looking around the information landscape around me, and Wikipedia is not even in the top 1000 of disinformation peddlers. They make mistakes, but they aren’t literally lying and propagandizing millions of people on purpose.
and Wikipedia is not even in the top 1000 of disinformation peddlers.
And you determined this how?
They make mistakes, but they aren’t literally lying and propagandizing millions of people on purpose.
And you determined this how?
yeah, lemmy could stop pushing extreme leftist misinformation from mysterious online “news” sources and rewriting history that would be a great start
That’s not what I meant. It’s true that too many left leaning tabloids get upvoted to the front page, but the direction of the slant isn’t the point, and there’s nothing “mysterious” about them. They’re clickbait/ragebait.
Yeah, western right wing neoliberal misinformation only.
In US English classes at any level above middle school, the importance of finding valid sources and providing citations is emphasized, although that’s mainly for essays and the like.
I could imagine it would be possible to adapt that mindset towards social media as well. Provide your sources, so you can prove you understand what you are saying. The foundations are there, they just need to be applied.
Except there are plenty of “sources” that spew even more BS. We can’t even trust what comes out of our government anymore (by design).
Most of the misinformation I regularly find on top are statements made by the US president or his administration – and these are news reports in an appropriate context with appropriate commentary by Lemmy users. Occasionally, very rarely, I have also seen misinformation about the US president, but I don’t see that as much of a problem.
Rather, I see it as a very serious problem that the US president himself and his administration are massively spreading misinformation. That is what my question refers to.
There’s buckets of wrong information on Lemmy mate, no question
With no offense/singling out intended, this is what I’m talking about.
You (and many others) are interested in misinformation from MAGA, but not from misreported news on MAGA. But it’s these little nuggets that his media ecosystem pounces on and has gotten Trump to where is.
And it’s exactly the same on the “other side.” The MAGA audience is combing the greater news ecosystem for misinformation like a hawk while turning a blind eye to their own.
The answer is for everyone to have better information hygiene, and that includes shooting misleading down story headlines one might otherwise like. It means being critical of your own information stream as you read.
So you think it’s okay for the US president to spread misinformation? You really don’t see a problem with that, even though you yourself talk about “information hygiene”?
It’s a pretty regulaely a big problem here.
But to answer your question, just check sources, verify with a second outlet, and call it out when you see it. That’s all you can do on an individual level.
I look at any individual’s history when they post anything sketchy and contextualize. Anything politically motivated is likely a shill unless they have a long broadly engaged post history across many subjects with depth. I block a lot of people too.
Anything politically motivated is likely a shill
Do you apply this to any political content? Or just politics you disagree with?
Do you seriously think someone is getting paid to come shill for a cause on Lemmy?
I think it is bots everywhere. Yeah, I have seen new and unused accounts post stuff with a clearly political agenda. We are in the age of individual targeting. A single very skilled dev could substantially alter public zeitgeist. It has become common for scripted botnets to exist. The idea of a nation like Israel the US or Russia creating such influence is well within scope. Russia brags about their ability to shape public opinion. I think the most influential people are actually not the super popular influencers. I think the real influencers are the next layer deeper like many people here. Super popular people are repackaging the things that people in places like here are not very good at communicating at scale. Maybe it is just my bias, but I often do projects and share ideas I have never seen before then watch others do them better than myself in ways that are far more popular than mine. I have no delusion of grandeur, it is just a pattern I’ve spotted a few times in life and seen it happen to others. The masses are mostly like a school of fish or mice following the piper blindly. People that are capable of thinking for themselves are the ones to watch carefully.
I’m not questioning whether such actors exist - I’m questioning why anyone would waste their time on a platform as tiny as Lemmy. Even if they were successful, the number of people they could sway here is minuscule. That time and effort would be far better spent on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, where the reach is exponentially greater.
I also question people’s ability to detect these actors in the first place. The common assumption seems to be that they’re pushing unpopular opinions that go against your beliefs - but I don’t think that’s their strategy. It seems far more effective to infiltrate echo chambers and feed the narrative within them, reinforcing the beliefs people already hold. That naturally escalates tensions with those in opposing camps, whose beliefs have also been artificially amplified.
I don’t think the main goal is to spread a specific worldview - it’s to sow chaos, distrust, and push society toward implosion from the inside.
I agree to an extent, but I don’t think the world is actually as centralized as it seems. When you look at the actual population numbers against any platform’s active participants it is a lot more spread out than the small pool any of us is familiar with. Like watching some economics stuff within the last few months a professor of economics in Sydney was talking about Italy compared to the rest if Europe and the size of the average factory. Italy was around 10 while the rest of Europe was something like 15 and the guy then breaks down why that is a big deal. I was thinking to myself I never thought about such a small number of people as a “factory” and certainly not as if less than a half dozen people are some big difference maker in a country.
My experience as a buyer for a chain of bike shops was very much like this. Intuition does not scale well to the numbers in reality until you discover the real governing rules and patterns.
I think you might find that the large platforms are obvious targets, but the actual average size of places where people engage will be much smaller than you expect and the number of places far more numerous than you have imagined possible. Political control is not about just the largest gatherings, it is about influencing from the top to well below average.
Russia likes to use convenient idiots. There are a lot of those in all spaces.
Looking at what has happened with Gaza since October 7th. I think Israel is already using AI to target media and make decisions to influence the world. They are basically R&D for the US military. On my own measly hardware I can write a LLM context that mimics a person beyond average and to the point it is not easy to tell if it is a real person or not. If someone as dumb as me can do it, so can others. You only spot the bad bots. Like 4chan GPT was in the wild and undetected nearly 3 years ago now. Models are much better now.
I believe Lemmy is likely about average in scope.
Do me! I’d honestly be interested in a report. I’m obviously not a bot, but what can you glean from my posts?
Free speech. The only way to combat bad ideas is with better ones.
