Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?
nytimes.comThere will always be misinformation "hot spots" the big difference between private messaging apps and Facebook is the private apps are not:
- actively recommending new groups for me to join
- actively trying to acquire my attention
- actively trying to get me to consume incendiary content
Instead they're trying to help me communicate with people This removes the "attractor function" of the really bad content and protects average people who aren't aware of or equipped to deal with misinformation. I dont have the correct stat in front of me by a large percentage of people that join QAnon groups on facebook do so b/c facebook recommended the group to them.
Most people are not going out of their way to find this content, its being shoved at them by algorithms.
That’s basically what TFA itself says.
“We know that when they’re on big, mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, extremists don’t just talk among themselves. They recruit. They join totally unrelated groups and try to seed conspiracy theories there. In some ways, I’d rather have 1,000 hardened neo-Nazis doing bad stuff together on an encrypted chat app than have them infiltrating 1,000 different local Dogspotting groups or whatever.”
I agree with your points and I am generally pro encrypted messaging. However, I am a bit concerned that FB messenger going encrypted means you will get all the same algorithmic boosts/spread for misinfo tightly coupled with a product that lets you trivially move the discussion behind encryption.
Obviously that can still happen now, e.g., finding other like minded people on FB and connecting on Signal. But that added friction is not insignificant
Alternative title:
"Should laypeople even be allowed to talk to each other? Perhaps we, media pundits who purvey only valid informattion (like WMDs or the Steele dossier) should only be allowed to do the talking"
People still have not wrapped their heads around just how much damage the WMD lie has done to American democracy and to the entire underlying trust basis of our civilization.
That's one reason I still consider Bush II to have been a worse president than Trump and probably the worst president of the last 100 years (at least). Trump was far more of a clown, but Bush II did more damage. Trump also would never have happened were it not for Bush II.
Bush set fire to America in order to set fire to a trillion dollars in Iraq and accomplish nothing (except indirectly creating ISIS). It's just staggeringly awful, and it's embarrassing that nobody is in prison.
Part of the issue behind this topic is it's still hotly contested where in the chain there were lies and where there was mistaken belief in information.
There's no doubt Bush's actions were utterly disastrous for America and many other countries, as well as their people, but it becomes a very different debate when you consider the two scenarios of Bush lying and Bush believing the intel, and then sub-scenarios like if Bush was primarily misled or mistakenly misinformed.
Hypothetically, there could have been no lying anywhere in the chain (even among the lowest-level intelligence analysts and informants), or some scattered lying, or a ton of it from bottom to top. Until that question is satisfactorily answered, it's hard to know who, if anyone, should belong in prison over the matter.
One of the most impactful consequences is that in most debates I now see, very few people believe the intelligence community when they make any claims about anything, including almost two decades later. For example, claims of election interference and espionage by the Russian government can be and frequently are easily dismissed by citing the WMD incident.
That alone has driven a lot of the civil tension over the past 4 years. (And of course this will remain the case no matter how one considers the deceit vs. mistake argument, since either way it means the IC is much harder to trust.)
>Hypothetically, there could have been no lying anywhere in the chain
Very hypothetically though. I don't know of many countries where they'd believe "not lying involved" to be the case (or even the higher echelons not knowing it, much less someone like DWB).
This appears to be a naivety unique to the US and a very few other places - perhaps because most people never had much issue to distrust the system in their personal lives, they get screwed over only in aggregate or abstract political ways. Any country that has had a more direct experience of history unfolding (wars, dictatorships, meddling, etc) knows this isn't the case. I guess blacks in the US did have such an experience (e.g. Jim Crow and other actions against them, open and convert - e.g. MLK/FBI).
>For example, claims of election interference and espionage by the Russian government can be and frequently are easily dismissed by citing the WMD incident.
As they should, unless evidence is given (and real evidence, not the kind usually given "we found some russian IP involved" etc, as this is fool proof, not to mention we have to trust them on having found it).
Historically intelligence agencies have lied again and again (judging from when they are sometimes cought or stuff gets unclassified over time), and on purpose, and it's not some bad apple/incompetence involved, it's matter of policy (basically their role is not to "find the truth" but to "serve the given objectives/create a narrative").
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
"Next"? There have sensationalist news articles about people doing Bad Things™ on WhatsApp for ages. It turns out that some people have bad intentions, and they are going to communicate.
This is such a pointless and uninsightful article.
>BRIAN I confess that I am worried about Telegram. Other than private messaging, people love to use Telegram for group chats — up to 200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram chat room. That seems problematic.
How about fuck you, BRIAN?
"BRIAN I confess I am worried about people, other than cat pictures, people love to use their brains to allow themselves to believe really bat-shit crazy ideas regardless of communication medium - there are up to 7.8 billion people. That seems problematic."
“BRIAN I’m worried that people have viewpoints that I strongly disagree with, and when they gather in sufficient numbers I feel threatened.”
Quick ban encryption! Actually could we just ban writing all together?
The NY Times is the single biggest hot spot of misinformation and has been for decades. I wish so much that they set their own house in order before criticizing others, but alas in an industry propped up by advertising and subscriptions, catering to your audience is more important than journalistic integrity.
Are activists masquerading as journalists in the media still the misinformation hotspot?
Remember that misinformation that cost America $3 trillion in the Middle East.