Is it bad for social media sites to police misinformation?

[Watevs]

@suzzer99

Yashar Ali who’s hyper-liberal but also extremely dedicated to the truth

Can’t resist!

[suzzer99]

Smart. I should take my profile picks in hoodies. Well actually that’s why I have a beard. It’s like a permanent hoodie for your face.

[anon24898493]

Literally every company that publishes info picks and chooses what they publish.

My point is in their current form they have way to much power.

I will point that out whether or not they agree with me politically.

[anon24898493]

@anon24898493

Isn’t the issue the amount of power a single company can have?

This is probably better discussed without bringing up a specific story. The story itself is irrelevant to the principle in question.

From 19 hours ago.

I’m more interested in discussing principles vs whether I agree with a specific outcome or decision.

[CanadaMatt3004]

We have one of those already

[LouisCyphre]

@anon24898493

simultaneously have no problem with them picking and choosing what gets shared

The problem was that they allowed to spread misinformation before and now they didn’t. Of course, I am okay if they change the thing I have previously criticized them for.

[Marksman]

@MrWookie

Can we get a breakdown of what criteria are necessary and sufficient for a message to have for a media company (traditional, new, tech, etc.) to then be obligated to broadcast it into the lives of billions of people?

The news organizations themselves are gatekeepers of vasts amounts of information. Maybe Keed did not know this.

[pyatnitski]

@LouisCyphre

The problem was that they allowed to spread misinformation before and now they didn’t.

It’s a fair point, but this is being blocked now for no other reason than that they think Trump is going to lose, isn’t it? Those of us who disagree here don’t disagree because we like misinformation, it’s because we think it’s more censoring done with clumsily political intent by, at best, morons.

[LouisCyphre]

@pyatnitski

it’s because we think it’s more censoring done with clumsily political intent by, at best, morons.

It’s the right thing maybe done for the wrong reason. I won’t argue that their intentions were pure. Social media companies in my opinion are responsible for what is published on their sites.
As others have pointed out the problem isn’t any so called censorship but the dominating market share these companies have. That’s the only reason we even talk about it. Nobody would care if dogafficinados.com refuses to give a platform to anything they consider false.

[Melkerson]

@anon10396289

I didn’t think that Alex Jones should have been banned because this is a case where the slippery slope argument actually holds water. And for the same reason I don’t like banning Q groups. Who makes that judgement? What is or isn’t a Q group?

And, yeah, it does seem more problematic to do this to an actual newspaper which has some level of editorial oversight and standards. Yes, I know it’s a tabloid but still. How do we know that the story is “obviously false”? Are the emails real? There’s no way for Twitter or Facebook to have known that, as quickly as they acted.

And I’m not saying that I think that the Hunter story is important. It seems quite dumb to be honest. But Facebook and Twitter aggressively curating what stories people are allowed to look at and link to is important.

I’m late to the party, but why do you care if it is obviously false or not? It sounds like as far as your position is concerned it shouldn’t matter at all.

[anon10396289]

It doesn’t matter to me at all. But it shows the bad faith of the censors and those justifying the censorship: Twitter and Facebook didn’t have any idea if the emails were authentic or not when they censored the story. And, of course, even if all the emails are authentic there could be aspects of the story that are false or exaggerated. Given that it’s the NY Post that’s almost sure to be true. Like, the Post seems to be vastly exaggerating the importance of the story, kind of implying that Joe is implicated directly when that doesn’t seem to clearly be the case. But that’s not a reason to censor, that’s a reason to challenge the story and show why that implication isn’t accurate.

[anon10396289]

@Marksman

The news organizations themselves are gatekeepers of vasts amounts of information. Maybe Keed did not know this.

I did know that. Not sure what that has to do with anything discussed here.

[LouisCyphre]

@anon10396289

that’s a reason to challenge the story and show why that implication isn’t accurate.

We have had the discussion in this forum about what to do with lies and false statements before. Studies were posted that showed that even even an article clearly proving something false is detrimental. That something is only amplified and discussing it any way will only increase the number of people who believe in it, facts be damned.