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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 1 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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tuna-piano ◴[27 May 20 13:39 UTC] No.23322986[source]▶
There's an unsolved conundrum I haven't heard mentioned yet.

After the 2016 election, there was a thought that too much false information is spreading on social media. This happens in every country and across every form of communication - but social media platforms seem particularly worrysome (and is particularly bad with Whatsapp forwards in some Asian countries).

So what should the social media companies do? Censor people? Disallow certain messages (like they do with terrorism related posts)?

They settled on just putting in fact check links with certain posts. Trust in the fact deciding institution will of course be difficult to settle. No one wants a ministry of truth (or the private alternative).

So the question remains - do you, or how do you lessen the spread of misinformation?

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giarc ◴[27 May 20 17:42 UTC] No.23326935[source]▶
Social media companies don't necessarily need to take a stand. Label any tweet with the word 'vaccine/vaccination' with a link to the WHO (or insert users country health ministry) info on vaccines. There is obiviously a lot of topics to cover (voting rights, flat earth, conspiracy theories etc) but isn't the thing tech companies can do well is things at scale?
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1. nmz ◴[27 May 20 18:48 UTC] No.23327971[source]▶
You can also go backwards, The problem with social media is that anyone can comment on it. and that's not a desirable trait for complex discussions. I can't tell how many times I've seen a news article and the top post in a forum like here or reddit be some expert explaining the article and indicate the failures of it. This is solvable, a social media for experts, every single link given a rating on its truthfulness. by actual non-anonymous experts. or hell, you can scrape for the link on twitter, have a database of professionals who have commented on twitter on the article and indicate what they said about it. Anyway, I'm just spitballing now so I'll stop.