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Comment by kikokikokiko | Hacker News Reader

The ONLY way to fight misinformation, intentional or not, is to allow a free exchange of ideas. The stupid ones, in the end would be shown as stupid and sink. But in todays world people seem to think that other people, "being the dumb ones", need to be protected from their stupidity, and "us being the sage ones" need to hide the dumb ideias from the dumb ones. Such arrogance.

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> The ONLY way to fight misinformation, intentional or not, is to allow a free exchange of ideas.

That implies all ideas are given equal visibility, but we already know that social networks prioritize content that's outrageous or controversial over content that isn't.

You want a free exchange of ideas? Start by fixing the algorithms.

I don't agree. It is trivial to spread bullshit and nontrivial to show that it's bullshit. Your philosophy allows misinformation to spread because of how much harder it is to refute than create.

Absolutely. It's basically a digital gish gallop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

What you call misinformation may be truth to others. Having Facebook and a cabal of biased fact checkers control what truth is for everyone simply allows no real diversity of thought. That echo chamber will produce false information.

I'm very wary of censoring ideas, but we do have laws around things like fraud and truth in advertising. Should we get rid of those?

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