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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: 0.213s | 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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dvtrn ◴[27 May 20 13:40 UTC] No.23323009[source]▶
Media literacy and criticism classes in middle school?
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1. nitwit005 ◴[27 May 20 23:38 UTC] No.23331548[source]▶
I took a critical thinking class in university, which covered deceptive messaging from advertisements fairly heavily. I'd like to think they all came out of that class no longer able to be fooled by this sort of thing, but I know it isn't the case.

It's easy to get people to question advertising, because they aren't emotionally invested. Once you stray into religion and politics, people often stop caring that they're hearing plainly untrue, or even self-contradictory, ideas.