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.
[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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
You’re right, I remember this. It just needs to be updated.
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).
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.
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.
Ruh roh. Better inform the mods over at /c/wikipedia
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
Any examples?
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”?
Of course not.
But Trump’s going to do it and no one is going to stop him. And if we aren’t willing to look at, say, Lemmy and misleading upvoted posts, how can we possibly tell MAGA acolytes to do the same thing on a more extreme scale?
Well, my question was about how to counter the constant misinformation spread by influential people like Trump (there are people like him in pretty much every country) – that’s why I mentioned other platforms, because Lemmy is completely irrelevant in this context due to its very limited reach.
Ah.
Well IMO, we really can’t.
I think the old adage of the internet applies: don’t feed the trolls. Trying to counter Trump just feeds his media machine with engagement, which is what got us here.
In other words, there is no such thing as bad attention.
Hence, I think we should focus our ire on the systems propping that up (like Big Tech’s engagement driven social media, profit above all news and such), not on Trump directly.
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?
Lol misinformation is still an issue on Lemmy, don’t kid yourself
Wait, you mean Stalin wasnt a cuddly teddy bear?
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
Recently there was a news story about how people earning 150k were struggling financially. Even just reading the article was enough to know the idea was bullshit (which is probably why the headline used such mealy-mouthed language). But that did not stop a bunch of users from prognosticating about how terrible the economy is and how we are on the verge of collapse.
The idea that households earning more than 150k are struggling is objectively wrong. They are not. But that idea is consistent with the political sentiments of users here ( billionaires vs everyone else in a zero sum economy ) so it gets traction.
People pass around trash sources like the new republic which often just copies other news outlets but reframes stories to be consistent with lefty sentiments about whatever current events are going on.
In one community I encountered an image macro criticizing a judge for making a ruling against some plaintiffs suing Trump that was completely divorced from any context, making it appear the judge was in the tank for trump when, if you knew even a little about her, or the ruling you would immediately recognize that idea as bullshit.
Those are just a few examples off the top of my head
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…
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.
To be the devil’s advocate, people elected nazis around the apparition of tv, so i don’t think social medias truly are a necessity for fascism to proliferate. That being said, they can still have a major impact.
In Hitler’s time, there was only radio, but Goebbels, his PR man, knew how to use it to great effect. His books are sometimes still read today in PR training courses because PR is just another word for propaganda, and Goebbels is considered one of the fathers of this discipline.
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
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.
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.
Anything politically motivated is likely a shill
Do you apply this to any political content? Or just politics you disagree with?
Simply leaves social media, or believe nothing on it.
Academic books by experrs, peer-reviewed papers etc. are better.
Wikipedia and podcast/interviews with real experts (not pundits, I mean experts) are good too.
I’m only on Lemmy, but I don’t think my individual decision will make a difference—and unfortunately, I don’t think anyone should realistically expect it to.
I think anyone who is already here has recognized the problem.
You can’t change the whole world but if you choose to point out misinformation among your real life group or in smaller communities, you can still make a difference.
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
Hardly an issue on Lemmy?
Or does it just feel that way when everyone around you has the same views?
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.
On the opposite end of the spectrum:
“I put it into chatGPT and it said George Soros is funding ISIS to raid Epstein Island.”
Still more credibility if you cite it rather than copy+paste XD
(And we can laugh at the poster who decided that was a valid source)
