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.
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).
That’s true, but from what I remember, half the class was either goofing off, sleeping, or straight up not there. Education as a whole isn’t valued in the US anymore. Students/parents blame teachers when their kid doesn’t magically absorb the information without doing any of the work or studying. Trade schools are becoming more popular because of the costs of college, but deep down, they think it’s an easy way to make good money. Those trades require hard work as well. Cost of college is most definitely contributed to the overall lack of education but that’s not causing the average US high schooler to have a reading level of a 5th grader in the UK.
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”?
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.
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.
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”?
There’s buckets of wrong information on Lemmy mate, no question
yeah, lemmy could stop pushing extreme leftist misinformation from mysterious online “news” sources and rewriting history that would be a great start
Yeah, western right wing neoliberal misinformation only.
step 1. misinformation is a problem on every platform. full stop.
I think what you mean is maliciously manufactured information. still, I believe Lemmy is subject to it.
I believe that both types can be effectively dispatched by effectively moderating the community, but not in the sense that you might be thinking.
I believe that we are looking at community moderation from the wrong direction. today, the goal of the mod is to prune and remove undesired content and users. this creates high overhead and operational costs. it also increases chances for corruption and community instability. look no further than Reddit and lemmy for this where we have a handful of mods that are in-charge of multiple communities. who put them there? how do you remove them should they no longer have the communities best interests in mind? what power do I have as a user to bring attention to corruption?
I believe that if we flip the role of moderators to be instead guardians of what the community accepts instead of what they can see it greatly reduces the strain on mods and increases community involvement.
we already use a mechanism of up/down vote. should content hit a threshold below community standards, it’s removed from view. should that user continue to receive below par results from inside the community, they are silenced. these par grades are rolling, so they would be able to interact within the community again after some time but continued abuse of the community could result in permanent silencing. should a user be unjustly silenced due to abuse, mod intervention is necessary. this would then flag the downvoters for abuse demerits and once a demerit threshold is hit, are silenced.
notice I keep saying silenced instead of blocked? that’s because we shouldn’t block their access to content or the community or even let them know nobody is seeing their content. in the case of malicious users/bots. the more time wasted on screaming into a void the less time wasted on corrupting another community. in-fact, I propose we allow these silenced users to interact with each other where they can continue to toxify and abuse each other in a spiraling chain of abuse that eventually results in their permanent silencing. all the while, the community governs itself and the users hum along unaware of what’s going on in the background.
IMO it’s up to the community to decide what is and isn’t acceptable and mods are simply users within that community and are mechanisms to ensure voting abuse is kept in check.
Great idea but tough to keep people from gaming it
genuinely curious of how would they game it?
of course there’s a way to game it, but I think it’s a far better solution than what social media platforms are doing currently and gives more options than figuratively amputate parts of community to save itself.
If I need 10 downvotes to make you disappear then I only need 10 Smurf accounts.
At the same time, 10 might be a large portion of some communities while miniscule in others.
I suppose you limit votes to those in the specific community, but then you’d have to track their activity to see if they’re real or just griefing, and track activity in relation to others to see if they’re independent or all grief together. And moderators would need tools to not only discover but to manage briefing, to configure sensitivity
you’re right. the threshold is entirely dependent on the size of the community. it would probably be derived from some part of community subscribers and user interactions for the week/month.
should a comment be overwhelmingly positive that would offset the threshold further.
in regards to griefing, if a comment or post is overwhelmingly upvoted and hits the downvote threshold that’s when mods step in to investigate and make a decision. if it’s found to not break rules or is beneficial to the community all downvoters are issued a demerit. after so many demerits those users are silenced in the community and follow through typical “cool down” processes or are permanently silenced for continued abuse.
the same could be done for the flip-side where comments are upvote skewed.
in this way, the community content is curated by the community and nurtured by the mods.
appeals could be implemented for users whom have been silenced and fell through the cracks, and further action could be taken against mods that routinely abuse or game the system by the admins.
I think it would also be beneficial to remove the concept of usernames from content. they would still exist for administrative purposes and to identify problem users, but I think communities would benefit from the “double blind” test. there’s been plenty of times I have been downvoted just because of a previous interaction. also the same, I have upvoted because of a well known user or previous interaction with that user.
it’s important to note this would change the psychological point of upvote and downvotes. currently they’re used in more of an “I agree with” or “I cannot accept that”. using the rules I’ve brought up would require users to understand they have just as much to risk for upvoting or downvoting content. so when a user casts their vote, they truly believe it’s in the interests of the community at large and they want that kind of content within the community. to downvote means they think the content doesn’t meet the criteria for the community. should users continue to arbitrarily upvote or downvote based on their personal preferences instead of community based objectivity, they might find themselves silenced from the community.
it’s based on the principles of “what is good for society is good for me” and silences anyone in the community that doesn’t meet the standards of that community.
for example, a community that is strictly for women wouldn’t need to block men. as soon as a man would self identify or share ideas that aren’t respondent to the community they would be silenced pretty quickly. some women might even be silenced but they would undoubtedly have shared ideas that were rejected by the community at large. this mimics the self-regulation that society has used for thousands of years IMO.
I think we need to stop looking at social networks as platforms for the individuals and look at them as platforms for the community as a whole. that’s really the only way we can block toxicity and misinformation from our communities. undoubtedly it will create echo chambers
Lol misinformation is still an issue on Lemmy, don’t kid yourself
Hardly an issue on Lemmy?
Or does it just feel that way when everyone around you has the same views?
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.
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
I’ve heard this method as a way to combat racism and transphobia as well (which I guess are based on misinformation). Most of the time people are just repeating what they’ve heard so it’s good to get them to think about why they believe it, even if it doesn’t fully change their mind.
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.
[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.
Media literacy is an old and important topic. Are you asking for an introduction to it?
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?
Free speech. The only way to combat bad ideas is with better ones.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have 100% seen blatant ads on here. Maybe not any big companies but people doing barely relevant self promotion and other weird site promotions.
Anything politically motivated is likely a shill
Do you apply this to any political content? Or just politics you disagree with?
I look at any individual’s history when they post anything sketchy and contextualize. […]
I am concerned that this would distill down to argumentum ad hominem.
Do me! I’d honestly be interested in a report. I’m obviously not a bot, but what can you glean from my posts?
I generally tag people when they say things I either really enjoy or very strongly disagree with. You’ve said a lot of things I very strongly disagree with including things I have found to be right-wing and gun-minded according to the tag I picked for you.
It’s not a complete and probably not an accurate judge of your character, I just choose to do this so that I don’t have to engage in conversations with people where I feel it will be a waste of my energy.
Linking to sources, that is a big one. Even something as honest as “I read it off this Wikipedia page [link]” goes a long way in showing that the poster is not pulling an idea out of their ass.
I will always prefer having debates where both sides cite their information, even if there isn’t a satisfying agreement at the end. Plus, faulty sources can be debunked when more eyes are able to scrutinize it.
