Yoodle 🇨🇦What’s the best way to deal with disinformation campaigns? Disinfo campaigns seem like a serious problem, and imo are responsible for a lot of the political instability we see today. But I don’t see any good way to prevent them. One option is censorship, but that can backfire and is easily abused. Another option is user verification, but most implementations of that sound like a privacy nightmare. So what do we do? Are there any good solutions?
TheTearMiserIMO and in a perfect world
What if we had thethingsweknow.com
it would be a paper writing site. academia.edu meets Twitter with
1000 word minimum.
no names attached.
no comments only stars
You search any topic you get the papers in ranked order
How to make a bomb ✅
How to vote responsibly✅
How to tie girlfriend up safely✅
How to recognise propaganda ✅
How to be a racist POS✅
How to... ✅
managed by no one
modded by no one
No reason to lie.
Free and open.
Grant 
🇨🇦@chimpchomp I don’t want to sound flippant but I remember hearing or reading something years ago that hit home then, and seems even more relevant today:
“The sum of all the intelligence in the world is a constant. The global populations is increasing”
This provides nothing to answer your question but can be a moment of understanding. And yes, also dismay, but that seems to be where we are…
Drew@chimpchomp maybe formal education in practical media discernment skills? Where you educate people on how not what to think so they know when they are being influenced? I think about this pretty often but haven’t found a satisfactory answer
@dharmadischarge iI know there are some places that already incorporate this into the public education system, so it would be interesting to see some stats on how they’re well they fair compared to us
@chimpchomp I think teaching that the truth can be ambiguously expressed and reductionist framing behavior is coercive to the point of taking away consent. Or making digital spaces have more consequences (using ids). I think most people use the internet as a opportunity to turn there neighbor into npcs and the anonymity of it makes it easier and with how troll bots are so pervasive it almost practical necessity to dismiss most interactions before even considering to investing emotionally.
@chimpchomp I know that last post may seem unrelated but understanding how psychology works and what encourages the best circumstances for the most people and a big part of it is accountability and how to keep people invested and engaged in a process nurturing responsibility through relationships and community.
What ever people can get away with and still live with themselves decides everything. And society is simpler its the discussion of the individual with the community of what is acceptable
@dharmadischarge i get what you are saying but i dont know if getting rid of anonymity is the solution here. For example people are generally not anonymous on Facebook yet it still seems to be one of the more toxic social media networks out there
@chimpchomp that is very valid I ran out of characters but I typed at one point that emphasizing the human rights of children so you can’t have indoctrination of the youth into the multi generational trauma of family politics through peer pressure and conditioning. Most social media is predatory and trains us to engage with it on its terms and its very purpose is take from us as much as it can for maximum profit.
We are the product on social media and we’re working to sell ourselves.
@chimpchomp not to sound hopeless but a lot of it is a personal responsibility of people who have been conditioned and trained to not do what is in there self interest.
They are chasing a brain numbing algorithmic high that gives us peace by taking away our sense of responsibility and maybe reinforcing a sense of traction to reality by holding predatory companies accountable. Doing what we are right now the simple act of trying to invest in people through discussion is most of what we can do.
@chimpchomp though I will apologize for rambling and sending so many messages it is something that means a lot to me.
@dharmadischarge yeah social media addiction is a real issue. Thats another very tricky problem with no clear solution
Shaun w/a U@chimpchomp Slow the news. Don’t believe what you see until you see the same information from different sources in different media types. Access foreign media sources to get alternative reporting. Wait a few days. Reports of news events can change over time even by reliable news sources, as they get more info.
Jessica the VI Artist🎚️🎹🌈@chimpchomp @RMiddleton It starts with education in media literacy. And unfortunately, our education system has been slowly eroding for years. It also starts with having independent media, which has also been slowly eroding over the years since media companies are allowed to become monopolies.
FruitConsumer@chimpchomp
If the well's poisoned, stop drinking from it.
Build real networks with real humans and form real friendships. And regard most things with: "Who knows these days. Sounds like that'd be what these known bad actors want, so might be true."
Assign some actors (journalists, etc) as trusted ones and audit their track record and conduct. It's human to err, though.
There could be some AI to detect likely disinformation campaign patterns, too. Flagging known bad actors might be good, too.
@FruitConsumer this is all good advice. Unfortunately i think it would be very difficult to get the majority of people to abide by this though, and disinfo campaigns operate at the population level. As others have said though progress can perhaps slowly be made by including this stuff in the education system. From what I understand other countries such as Taiwan already include how to recognize disinfo as part of the curriculum in the public school system
Drew Scott Daniels@chimpchomp teach basic literacy properly, and then critical thinking. I was amazed to learn how many people don’t read even close to all the words, and read most larger words wrong. Emotional ratings, and easier access to trusted information would be nice for those that have those skills. I personally enjoy local journalism that’s missing most other places in the world.
@drewdaniels thanks for your input. Those stats about the literacy rates in kids are pretty depressing. I didn’t realize the situation was that dire. I wonder what the relevant canadian stats would look like
@chimpchomp I hope much better as school funding is generally a lot better. Things like PISA results are better give me a positive feeling about literacy here.
We have a problem with staffing for rural schools, and high speed access to Internet which might help bring better education.
We have a problem with staffing for rural schools, and high speed access to Internet which might help bring better education.
@drewdaniels internet is definitely helpful but I think we should resist the impulse to digitize everything about our education system. The most you can distract yourself with pen and paper is by doodling, whereas with a computer you can get distracted by watching YouTube in class or something. But anyway that’s off topic