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Comment by blitz_skull | Hacker News Reader

You think governments have the ability to combat misinformation without living in some Orwellian-esque regime?

"Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age. If we could even start by labeling misinformation properly, then maybe we could do something about it.

The point of a sovereign government is to serve the people—that's it. Keep them safe, keep things "fair" (to whatever degree that's possible), and to fight for the prolonged existence of said people. "Misinformation" hardly fits into that in its current state.

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>You think governments have the ability to combat misinformation without living in some Orwellian-esque regime

yes. Of course it can and has been abused, but if we use that line of thinking we'd have zero government.

>If we could even start by labeling misinformation properly, then maybe we could do something about it.

I agree. It's very case by case, but I'd hope in this case that "flooded with fake images [about war]", i.e. propaganda, is at least one of these cases where you do want governments (emphasis on plural)to intervene. Especially as AI will only hasten the ability to generate such propaganda.

>"Misinformation" hardly fits into that in its current state.

misinformation fit into all 3 aspects you mention, though. misinformation has harmed people, regardless of your political spectrum we should be able to agree with this. And the ability to process the proper facts does keep things fair over who has the "hottest memes" or exploits SEO the best for their goals.

Misinformation has not harmed people. Stupid people have believed stupid things at face value and acted on that information.

Information cannot harm. Only inform. For better or for worse. If you are too stupid and get duped by incorrect information, that's on you. No one else.

By the same logic, drugs and gambling never harmed anyone. Every party agrees and partakers in the activity. At what point is it deemed suitable for the government to step in and say gambling is illegal?

>If you are too stupid and get duped by incorrect information, that's on you. No one else.

You and all your victims apparently. The family that may not be able to escape you, the people you prejudice against or even assault over your zealous beliefs, the town you vote or even assign new policy directly to. Maybe even the planet you impact l. If stupid people kept to themselves a lot of laws and regulations wouldn't need to exist. But my country did need 200 years just to consider a woman a "voting citizen" after all.

> By the same logic, drugs and gambling never harmed anyone. Every party agrees and partakers in the activity. At what point is it deemed suitable for the government to step in and say gambling is illegal?

Not sure how that pertains to the argument at hand?

> You and all your victims apparently. The family that may not be able to escape you, the people you prejudice against or even assault over your zealous beliefs, the town you vote or even assign new policy directly to. Maybe even the planet you impact l. If stupid people kept to themselves a lot of laws and regulations wouldn't need to exist. But my country did need 200 years just to consider a woman a "voting citizen" after all.

I don't understand why you typed all this?

> Keep them safe

Imagine an enemy uses troll farms to cause divisions, spread lies, propaganda and conspiracy theories in plain sight. This leads to people distrusting everything (how can you even know what is truth when there are so many lies out there, etc.), including medical advice from medical professionals, evacuation orders in case of natural disasters, etc. Or even participate in a coup attempt because social media has led them to believe there is some gross injustice, or whatever. Or go and decapitate teachers because social media told them they're offending their holy religion.

Now, the above is factual, not an imaginary scenario. At the very least Russia has been caught directly doing the above, as well as paying actors to cause trouble and stoke divisions (like the guy burning Qurans in Sweden). In some countries there have even been fights between troll farms from different countries (it was somewhere in Central Africa between Russian and French troll farms) online. Same goes for ISIS and similar organisations that had very heavy recruitment online.

So, do you really think combating misinformation such as the above isn't a part of keeping citizens safe? I'd take selective censorship of e.g. ISIS and affiliated groups in exchange for teachers not getting decapitated, thank you very much.

(If anyone thinks I'm exaggerating with the decapitation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Samuel_Paty & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arras_school_stabbing which was "just" a stabbing)

What's causing people to distrust everything is not some troll farms lying to them. It's their own government lying to them, constantly, repeatedly, incessantly - and then claiming only strict control by the same government over all the information can save the citizens from evil trolls that are out to get them. I dgaf what Russians say, but when I see the US government lying constantly and the corporate press parroting these lies and submitting themselves to the partisan propaganda - I will never trust them ever again on anything.

> Now, the above is factual, not an imaginary scenario

It's an imaginary scenario. You know that the whole Russiagate multi-year farce turned out to be nothing but lies from our own governments, right? It's been proven many times over.

The idea that we have to be kept safe from "division" is especially hilarious given that the whole point of democracy is to allow people to work out their naturally occurring divisions peacefully.

The fact that foreign state actors employ disinformation tactics (and employ people to that end) is not a lie - it was known during Soviet Union times and is known today.

The details of the Russian influence operation are irrelevant to the broader point - malicious actors will weaponize the medium, and non curated spaces quickly devolve into a toxic cesspool.

Clearly you have never been a moderator of any community.

Who's talking about Russiagate? It's one of millions of scandals where Russian influence is there for all to see. It might be hard to quantify exactly in some cases, but it's undeniably there. Take a look at the Quran burning guy. Or the Austrian scandal.

Also, Russia was but one of the examples. Is it imaginary that 2 teachers have been murdered by Islamic nutjobs in France off of social media?

> The idea that we have to be kept safe from "division" is especially hilarious given that the whole point of democracy is to allow people to work out their naturally occurring divisions peacefully.

That's hard in countries with broken political systems like the unbelievably stupid American dual party one. And is it actually working nowadays? To me from the outside it definitely seems like everything, even basic science and common sense, are immediately partisan. If one party is for something, the other is immediately against it regardless of merits. Maybe except Israel and army spending? And even in non broken systems, stuff like Covid was extremely politicised. You can't debate with a pigeon shitting everywhere.

> Russiagate? It's one of millions of scandals where Russian influence is there for all to see

Ah I see, you never became aware of how that story ended.

Russiagate ended with the discovery that it had all been a lie, that there was no Trump/Russia collusion and the US media had spent years knowingly propagandizing the population. There was no scandal, except the scandal of how the media could have done that. Eventually some American journalists even admitted what had happened.

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-p...

But you seem to be stuck in 2018, before that had all been proven. You are yourself the victim of successful propaganda!

Why are you still focusing on one simple example? Why are you ignoring the forrest for one funky tree? One that doesn't even disprove what I said, because Russiagate is specifically about collusion between Trump and Russia, not about the presence or absence of Russian propaganda in support of Trump. Of which undeniably there was a lot of.

And again, it's one example among millions.

It wasn't "one tree" was it, it was years and years of interlocking stories and scams, all of which were fake. The whole claim that Russia was promoting Trump was a part of that lie, but you don't seem able to let go of it.

What's with the obsession with Trump? If you can't let go of it, think about the Quran burning guy, or the Austrian scandal.

And once you start picking apart any of those examples, you'll find out that random trolls may post some stupid and false stuff, but a coordinated disinformation campaign usually has either governmental or quasi-governmental entity behind it. You don't like Russians? Take covid origins. We had a campaign of suppressing the idea that Wuhan virology labs had anything to do with it. Who did that? Random trolls? No, it was (part of) scientific establishment and governmental entities. Why did they do it? Because they had in their interests that that theory was not being explored, and they had the resources to suppress dissent. Fortunately, this time they (mostly) failed, but it is the same set of entities that demands control over the information now, and if that control is given to them, next time they decide to do the same, they will succeed.

The big problem is not that Russian propaganda exists. The problem is that hiding behind the need to "rescue" citizens from Russian propaganda, other governments want to institute an information control regime that is very similar to what Russia has. If that happens in Russia, I feel their pain, but fortunately in my country I can still speak freely. But if this goes away and I also don't have freedom of speech, then it's not Russia that is doing that to me, it's my own government. And that's what I should be afraid of - not that Russian propaganda will take my freedoms, but that my on government, hiding behind the fact that Russian propaganda exists, will take away my rights - "for my own good", of course.

I dont know about the other poster, I cant comment on being safe from division etc.

However the Russian info warfare playbook is a fact.

Russia was the first country to develop the most extensive Online Ops capability. (For contrast - America/Israel created Stuxnet.)

It’s not even a secret.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

> "Misinformation" is probably one of the most abused phrases of our age.

Politifact is a good case study. Academics have repeatedly published data since 2011 [1] and most recently 2023 [2] showing an overt bias yet it's still used as a reputable source to fact check things in many places on the internet.

[1] https://smartpolitics.lib.umn.edu/2011/02/10/selection-bias-...

[2] https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/8f9a6f3b-efd7-46f3-b4be...

That "PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats" could also be explained by Republicans making false statements 3 times as often. I don't want to start a huge partisan pissing match here, but that possibility wasn't considered and is merely hand-waved away. It also doesn't even attempt to look at the ratings themselves to see if they're about accurate. That second article is more or less the same with more words.

Neither are convincing for claims of "overt bias", and even IF there was a huge bias in the selection of statements to rate, then this only means ... a bias in the selection of statement to rate, and doesn't actually say anything about the truthfulness (or lack thereof) of the actual fact-checks. A partisan "we-rate-republicans.com" and "we-rate-democrats.com" could be 100% accurate in their ratings. "Biased" does not equal "false".

I do think that "politicians from one side are rated much more frequently" is a good reason to take a close and skeptical look by the way, but that needs to start with "are politicians from that side actually untruthful significantly more often" as a baseline.

So I would rate your post as "false" for 1) making a claim that's completely unsupported by your evidence because your evidence actually makes a different claim, and 2) being weak evidence in the first place.

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