This is a frustrating take. I think a key thing you've overlooked here is that "people seem mostly better informed" and "people are more misinformed" can both be true at the same time. It reminds me of the time Politifact rated Jon Stewart statement about "the most consistently misinformed media viewers" being Fox News viewers as "False" because Fox News viewers knew all kinds of basic facts like the names of their senators and things like that ― Politifact's analysis simply ignored the fact that Jon Stewart obviously wasn't talking about those sorts of facts. If voters learn what a "comptroller" does, but they also "learn" that "millions of 150 year olds are collecting social security", that's a clear net negative!
And even if, in the past, people were just as misinformed as today, it can still be a much bigger *problem* today because there's an uptick in more misinformed people running for office by offering voters the same type and degree of misknowledge as the voters themselves posess. That's new, isn't it?
Look, Trump was elected. Twice. A large section of the population thinks he was elected three times(!). Some of them would like to disregard or misinterpret the consititution to elect him a fourth time. Is there any previous candidate like Trump? From the start, Trump consistently made more false statements than mainstream Republicans[1]. If the late 20th century offered other politicians of similar wrongness, they didn't win the presidency, whereas I think the false statements themselves are what propelled Trump to the presidency, or do you think he won *the primary* based on moderation and narcissism? And as far as I know, parties similar to AfD were not popular in Europe before the social media era.
You mention vaccines, but instead of finding evidence for the bailey that misinfo-driven anti-vaxism hasn't increased, you look at vaccination rates and uptake speed instead, which is erroneous because people often don't get vaccinated for reasons other than anti-vax sentiment. As far as I know, the popular anti-vax movement is built almost entirely on the foundation of Andrew Wakefield's popularity. But Wakefield got his start in ~1998 and was thoroughly exposed as a con artist by Brian Deer[2]. So, sure, you can argue that people used to be less informed, but I still think they used to be less misinformed.
I agree that Trump's relative moderation was a genuine selling point. But that's sort of just it: the "misinformation" stuff isn't about left vs right, it's about up vs down (see diagram[4]). Misinformation doesn't make people more right-wing, it might not even make them more down-wing, but it makes the consequences of down-ness more severe, and the down-ness and general lack of morality in society (especially among Christians? I don't get that part) makes people more likely to vote for a guy who lies constantly.
Yes, there have always been fundamental flaws in both production and consumption of traditional news. That's important. But beyond that, something has changed in society, and it's not subtle. My hypothesis remains that while people learn more from traditional news (whose most popular "free tier" may or may not have declined in quality), they also learn more from polarizing pseudo-news: MSNBC, Fox News, talk radio and (most of all) social media. I have one longstanding proposal[3] to help deal with both problems, but that's just one of the tools we need and, presumably, won't be able to get any funding for.
In a way, yes, Republicans have "moderated". For example, they no longer want to privatize all social welfare programs--only for voters who don't support them!
They no longer want to cut taxes for all wealthy people. In fact, in some instances, they want to raise them--but only on the wealthy in blue states!
They no longer want to cut funding for all educational institutions--only educational institutions that teach the wrong classes, or have the wrong kinds of majors, or allow discussion of the wrong ideas, etc. etc. etc.
Basically, the GOP has gotten *less ideological*. But that's not the same thing as "moderating".
You can change parts of your policy platform without necessarily "moderating" as a political actor. Authoritarians, and other ruthless people, do it all the time. :/
This is basically true, but a bit of a straw man. The current media landscape makes it possible for informed people to be more informed and misinformed people to be more misinformed. The total number of misinformed people, & of conspiracy theories, has probably remained similar, but some on the right (& the left!) are more delusional than ever, and better networked. This does increase the intensity of the polarization. On the other hand, the claim this is arguing against is clearly motivated reasoning.
I agree with the point that we cannot fact-check and moderate our way out of this problem. But I disagree with the optimism. The fact that a huge number of people are anti-expert is really problematic, and not getting any better. On things like mask mandates and climate change subsidies, it would be nice if the right would say "the cost of action is too high." That way we could talk about the appropriate scale of solutions, even if that means no action. Instead we wind up in a space where the left is trying to convince people that problems are even real, which comes back to some form of "trust the science," which does not actually convince anyone.
I agree with Matt’s take on the misinformation panic, but I still wonder why a democratizing technology like the internet became seen as a threat to democracy? I think it might have something to do with theories about democratic transitions leading to more social conflict and even authoritarian backsliding/war….
Is it possible that the internet is democratizing information globally (as intended) but this democratic transition is shaking things up too quickly and ushering in a backslide toward illiberal democracy?
I agree with Matt that legitimate differences (in worldview, temperament, ideology, etc.) are underrated as a source of epistemic conflict. And I agree that engagement with online news likely leads to more knowledge about discrete facts.
But what Matt doesn't address second order processes about what we *do* with those discrete facts: how we contextualize them, weigh them against our priors, and shift our predictive models and paradigms in response to new facts. My impression is that sort of second-order sense making has gotten much worse in the age of online media, although I admit I'm not sure exactly how you'd look at data to find proof or refutation of that claim.
When people complain about 'misinformation', I feel like what they are really complaining about is information immunization: that our polarized epistemic landscape protects people from having their priors challenged by inconvenient facts. And this immunization works in much the same way that real immunizations do: you feed an intellectual immune system selective snippets of discrete facts arranged in ways to activate its defenses against novel epistemic invaders. January 6th wasn't that bad because a CNN op-ed made a spurious comparison; inflation isn't legitimate because corporate profit margins have increased; etc.
In other words, the problem isn't so much an overwhelming amount of bad information. It's that it's become increasingly hard for good information to change our minds.
So much of this resonates with material I'm discussing in the epistemology classes I'm teaching right now. I particularly want to quote this one passage from William James in "The Will to Believe":
"Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and probably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case."
I think a lot of people worry that William James is endorsing all kinds of misinformation in this paper, but I think James is onto something deeply, disturbingly right, that any sort of systematic rule of privileging any particular conception of evidence, ends up locking us out of particular classes of truths, and there's no objective reason to prefer one such conception to another, only a subjective evaluation of the risks of the different kinds of mistakes you might make.
I'm interested in that blip in the child vaccination rates. It looks like it might be either 2008 or 2009. Is this a data issue related to the financial crisis, or an actual brief downward spike in childhood vaccinations around the swine flu pandemic?
Based on those, I'm hopeful that a couple years from now, covid vaccinations will be as accepted as others, and childhood vaccination rates for other diseases will recover from whatever hit they take in 2021. (And maybe mRNA technology will produce new vaccines at a fast enough rate that people will get used to the idea of new vaccines, instead of hesitating on each one?)
I think at least a few relevant things are happening that Matt ignores in his take:
1) To the extent that I agree with Matt’s premise, we’re also dealing with a perceptual bias. Acquiring knowledge serves to make one more aware of his blind spots. By knowing more, we’re made to feel less informed.
2) Matt fusses over the definition of “being informed” but then narrowly focuses on depth of knowledge rather than breadth when he highlights how much cranks can know. Knowing a ton and obsessing about JFK is not the same thing as being broadly informed.
3) We can measure factual knowledge gain better than we can the spread of misinformation because facts are (more) persistent over time but conspiracies are an ever-evolving, moving target.
“That said, I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change”.
I disagree. You might be able to convince me that the ratio of credible information to propagandistic misinformation has not changed over time. But the same amazing aspects of the internet that keep you informed function to facilitate accessibility and spread of misinformation, too.
This is why the Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, or any other measure of knowledge gain for that matter, is not sufficient to conclude that people are better informed over time. Just because we cannot similarly measure the corresponding growth of misinformation (share of letters to the editor is obviously not a representative measure) shouldn’t be taken as evidence that it hasn’t grown. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam.
‘I think dumbass populists look at this and go “aha! the experts are all a cabal of liars and we can ignore them in favor of whatever batshit conspiracy theory we like!”’
1. The unpopularity of far left views in the US isn't due to misinformation, those views are far left and
2. There was lots of misinformation in the past and that was bad and
3. Viral misinformation spread on social media now is also bad.
Like, there may be a moral panic and the left concluding that the reason the whole US doesn't agree with them is 'cuz of the misinformation' is dumb, but maybe we should still be somewhat concerned about robots spreading information based on viral spread (excuse me, engagement) and and no other criteria.
I don't know what a non-freaked-out discussion would look like, but I fear there is a real challenge whose sight we could lose track of if the discourse on our information environment gets too hysterical to take seriously.
I sometimes hear people say "every new medium has a rough launch and a panic and naysayers and it works out okay" but that's because people _do_ things to try to fix new problems.
This is a really weak piece (sorry). It’s bits of evidence with very questionable relevance, like people being able to identify the three branches of government, and personal anecdotes, like “I personally am better informed.”
That’s not to say you’re wrong, but my gut points in the opposite direction, for what are probably not much better reasons. Yes, it is easier to use the Internet to become more informed, but it is also easier to use the Internet to become *less* informed.
When presented with a piece of info that already aligns with your point of view, your question is “can I believe it?” When presented with something that doesn’t, your question is “must I believe it?” If you don’t want to believe climate change is real, there are literally thousands of websites to support your view, many of which appear very science-y.
There’s a reason that QAnon’s motto is “do your own research.” It’s that a lot of people are really, really bad at it. And for some weak anecdotal evidence, I’d point to the numerous online support groups that have sprung up for people who have lost family members to QAnon, or more prosaically, to Fox News. Almost everyone says their relatives transformed from nice, normal people, into obsessed, rageful cranks.
I’d also point to Facebook’s role in facilitating an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Most people are not sophisticated about where they get their information.
This reminds me of Snowden scoffing at the ridiculous idea that anyone would ever take medical advice from Joe Rogan, following that up by Rogan’s show logo. That of course, received a healthy mix of replies agreeing it was ridiculous, and replies saying they take medical advice from Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has said celebrities have called him for advice, celebrities have said they take his advice, doctors say their vaccine resistant patients overwhelmingly cite Joe Rogan, and thousands and thousands of people say they take his advice.
I also think people are missing something obvious, which is that Rogan had already built credibility as a fitness guru from his previous career. I have a low opinion of the advice fitness gurus give, and I’d say Joe Rogan is squarely in the middle of the dubiousness scale. But of course many people would be open to his wellness takes.
"I’d also point to Facebook’s role in facilitating an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Most people are not sophisticated about where they get their information."
Ah yes the human race, which famously had no ethnic cleansings before Facebook was invented. The radio has facilitated a number of genocides, most notoriously in Rwanda. Are you concerned about the dangers of radio? Or the printing press, or pamphlets, or television, or the telephone....?
I’m not sure what the point of your comment is. Facebook is one company, not “the radio.” And the fact that ethnic cleanings have occurred in the past doesn’t obviate the fact that the Myanmar military aggressively pushed disinformation about Muslims via Facebook. Most of Myanmar were new to phones, and their phones came preloaded with Facebook, which they took to be a real newsfeed. These people were new to getting information online. From a coldly analytical viewpoint, it was a great natural experiment demonstrating how people new to the wealth of (mis)information on the Internet handle it. And the answer is, poorly.
As for Rwanda, I think you are proving my point, which is that people are often led astray and that it’s good to have rules like “don’t promote genocide” on mass communication mediums. If I’d suggested we ban the internet, your comparison might make more sense. But I’m not. I’m saying the Internet can, and does make a lot of people less informed.
Facebook is a social media company- if Mark Zuckerberg had never been born, there would instead be a different social media company that's basically similar and does all the same things.
If it was 50 years ago and social media didn't exist, the Myanmar military would 'aggressively push disinformation' via television. If it was 100 years ago, they would've done so via the radio. If it was earlier, it would've been by word of mouth. Your fundamental mistake is imagining that the ethnic cleansing would not have taken place without Facebook existing. Seeing as 99% of all ethnic cleansings- of which there used to be vastly, vastly more!- took place pre-Facebook, I think what you're missing is that FB is simply the means Myanmar used to communicate in absence of some other means. 'Facebook determinism' is silly
"The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors."
Now that it is so much easier to get good information, to locate primary sources, I often wonder if the media was always this awful.
The recent thing that I think of is coverage of “anti-CRT” bills. When I actually locate the bill and read the 2-3 relevant paragraphs, the descriptions that I’m getting in the media seem like dishonest histrionics. (Which started for me when I heard that Texas was going to make it impossible to teach about slavery and I thought “how did they word a bill that’s meant to produce that result?”)
Was this always the case, and I just didn’t have the ability to find the bill in a matter of minutes? Or has our media gotten worse in this regard?
The thing that opened my eyes was listening to the original Serial podcast. I kept waiting for the big innocence reveal, and then the guy just seemed guilty when it didn't come. Then people in the sub-reddit were able to obtain the trial transcripts through a FOIA and you could see what evidence the journalists chose to include, not focus on or exclude completely. It was shocking. I look at documentaries with a jaundiced eye now.
There should be a norm that whenever print journalists write about a bill, they link to the draft text of the bill. The internet is helpful in letting readers check whether legislation is being described honestly, but if it *is* being described honestly then why shouldn't the story provide a link?
Or court decisions. As a lawyer, I find it especially despicable when dedicated legal journalists (like Mark Joseph Stern at Slate) omit linking to the decision or even providing a case caption/number that would facilitate searching for the decision.
Not just bills - any time any journalist writes about any text, whether it's a bill, or a scientific paper, or a prize-winning local high student essay contest, they should link to the actual text itself.
What makes you think journalists (print or otherwise) take the time to understand what they’re writing about rather than merely parroting whatever talking points they’re being handed by some partisan figure?
I'm not sure it was always the case, but it has been that way for quite a long time, certainly during most/all of my adult working life, which began in the 90s. I do think it's worse now though.
This is a frustrating take. I think a key thing you've overlooked here is that "people seem mostly better informed" and "people are more misinformed" can both be true at the same time. It reminds me of the time Politifact rated Jon Stewart statement about "the most consistently misinformed media viewers" being Fox News viewers as "False" because Fox News viewers knew all kinds of basic facts like the names of their senators and things like that ― Politifact's analysis simply ignored the fact that Jon Stewart obviously wasn't talking about those sorts of facts. If voters learn what a "comptroller" does, but they also "learn" that "millions of 150 year olds are collecting social security", that's a clear net negative!
And even if, in the past, people were just as misinformed as today, it can still be a much bigger *problem* today because there's an uptick in more misinformed people running for office by offering voters the same type and degree of misknowledge as the voters themselves posess. That's new, isn't it?
Look, Trump was elected. Twice. A large section of the population thinks he was elected three times(!). Some of them would like to disregard or misinterpret the consititution to elect him a fourth time. Is there any previous candidate like Trump? From the start, Trump consistently made more false statements than mainstream Republicans[1]. If the late 20th century offered other politicians of similar wrongness, they didn't win the presidency, whereas I think the false statements themselves are what propelled Trump to the presidency, or do you think he won *the primary* based on moderation and narcissism? And as far as I know, parties similar to AfD were not popular in Europe before the social media era.
You mention vaccines, but instead of finding evidence for the bailey that misinfo-driven anti-vaxism hasn't increased, you look at vaccination rates and uptake speed instead, which is erroneous because people often don't get vaccinated for reasons other than anti-vax sentiment. As far as I know, the popular anti-vax movement is built almost entirely on the foundation of Andrew Wakefield's popularity. But Wakefield got his start in ~1998 and was thoroughly exposed as a con artist by Brian Deer[2]. So, sure, you can argue that people used to be less informed, but I still think they used to be less misinformed.
I agree that Trump's relative moderation was a genuine selling point. But that's sort of just it: the "misinformation" stuff isn't about left vs right, it's about up vs down (see diagram[4]). Misinformation doesn't make people more right-wing, it might not even make them more down-wing, but it makes the consequences of down-ness more severe, and the down-ness and general lack of morality in society (especially among Christians? I don't get that part) makes people more likely to vote for a guy who lies constantly.
Yes, there have always been fundamental flaws in both production and consumption of traditional news. That's important. But beyond that, something has changed in society, and it's not subtle. My hypothesis remains that while people learn more from traditional news (whose most popular "free tier" may or may not have declined in quality), they also learn more from polarizing pseudo-news: MSNBC, Fox News, talk radio and (most of all) social media. I have one longstanding proposal[3] to help deal with both problems, but that's just one of the tools we need and, presumably, won't be able to get any funding for.
[1] https://www.datarevelations.com/all-politicians-lie-some-more-than-others/
[2] This is a brilliant pseodo-documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9KAskejZdhskyriHk/let-s-make-the-truth-easier-to-find
[4] https://x.com/DPiepgrass/status/1808746065132130494
In a way, yes, Republicans have "moderated". For example, they no longer want to privatize all social welfare programs--only for voters who don't support them!
They no longer want to cut taxes for all wealthy people. In fact, in some instances, they want to raise them--but only on the wealthy in blue states!
They no longer want to cut funding for all educational institutions--only educational institutions that teach the wrong classes, or have the wrong kinds of majors, or allow discussion of the wrong ideas, etc. etc. etc.
Basically, the GOP has gotten *less ideological*. But that's not the same thing as "moderating".
You can change parts of your policy platform without necessarily "moderating" as a political actor. Authoritarians, and other ruthless people, do it all the time. :/
This is basically true, but a bit of a straw man. The current media landscape makes it possible for informed people to be more informed and misinformed people to be more misinformed. The total number of misinformed people, & of conspiracy theories, has probably remained similar, but some on the right (& the left!) are more delusional than ever, and better networked. This does increase the intensity of the polarization. On the other hand, the claim this is arguing against is clearly motivated reasoning.
Pretty interesting. Seems to support the hypothesis that what we really need to train is character and wisdom, not fact memorization.
I agree with the point that we cannot fact-check and moderate our way out of this problem. But I disagree with the optimism. The fact that a huge number of people are anti-expert is really problematic, and not getting any better. On things like mask mandates and climate change subsidies, it would be nice if the right would say "the cost of action is too high." That way we could talk about the appropriate scale of solutions, even if that means no action. Instead we wind up in a space where the left is trying to convince people that problems are even real, which comes back to some form of "trust the science," which does not actually convince anyone.
"People are often misinformed about things."
Not according to what I've been told.
I agree with Matt’s take on the misinformation panic, but I still wonder why a democratizing technology like the internet became seen as a threat to democracy? I think it might have something to do with theories about democratic transitions leading to more social conflict and even authoritarian backsliding/war….
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/democratic-transitions-institutional-strength-and-war/E2819B67D659238C98BF18FEBDC4BECD
Is it possible that the internet is democratizing information globally (as intended) but this democratic transition is shaking things up too quickly and ushering in a backslide toward illiberal democracy?
I agree with Matt that legitimate differences (in worldview, temperament, ideology, etc.) are underrated as a source of epistemic conflict. And I agree that engagement with online news likely leads to more knowledge about discrete facts.
But what Matt doesn't address second order processes about what we *do* with those discrete facts: how we contextualize them, weigh them against our priors, and shift our predictive models and paradigms in response to new facts. My impression is that sort of second-order sense making has gotten much worse in the age of online media, although I admit I'm not sure exactly how you'd look at data to find proof or refutation of that claim.
When people complain about 'misinformation', I feel like what they are really complaining about is information immunization: that our polarized epistemic landscape protects people from having their priors challenged by inconvenient facts. And this immunization works in much the same way that real immunizations do: you feed an intellectual immune system selective snippets of discrete facts arranged in ways to activate its defenses against novel epistemic invaders. January 6th wasn't that bad because a CNN op-ed made a spurious comparison; inflation isn't legitimate because corporate profit margins have increased; etc.
In other words, the problem isn't so much an overwhelming amount of bad information. It's that it's become increasingly hard for good information to change our minds.
So much of this resonates with material I'm discussing in the epistemology classes I'm teaching right now. I particularly want to quote this one passage from William James in "The Will to Believe":
"Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and probably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case."
Also, this is as good a place as any to post my annotated version of this paper: https://genius.com/William-james-the-will-to-believe-annotated
I think a lot of people worry that William James is endorsing all kinds of misinformation in this paper, but I think James is onto something deeply, disturbingly right, that any sort of systematic rule of privileging any particular conception of evidence, ends up locking us out of particular classes of truths, and there's no objective reason to prefer one such conception to another, only a subjective evaluation of the risks of the different kinds of mistakes you might make.
I'm interested in that blip in the child vaccination rates. It looks like it might be either 2008 or 2009. Is this a data issue related to the financial crisis, or an actual brief downward spike in childhood vaccinations around the swine flu pandemic?
But on a related note, I often find it helpful to look at this set of past Gallup polls regarding vaccines: https://news.gallup.com/vault/319976/gallup-vault-new-vaccines-not-wildly-popular.aspx
Based on those, I'm hopeful that a couple years from now, covid vaccinations will be as accepted as others, and childhood vaccination rates for other diseases will recover from whatever hit they take in 2021. (And maybe mRNA technology will produce new vaccines at a fast enough rate that people will get used to the idea of new vaccines, instead of hesitating on each one?)
I think at least a few relevant things are happening that Matt ignores in his take:
1) To the extent that I agree with Matt’s premise, we’re also dealing with a perceptual bias. Acquiring knowledge serves to make one more aware of his blind spots. By knowing more, we’re made to feel less informed.
2) Matt fusses over the definition of “being informed” but then narrowly focuses on depth of knowledge rather than breadth when he highlights how much cranks can know. Knowing a ton and obsessing about JFK is not the same thing as being broadly informed.
3) We can measure factual knowledge gain better than we can the spread of misinformation because facts are (more) persistent over time but conspiracies are an ever-evolving, moving target.
“That said, I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change”.
I disagree. You might be able to convince me that the ratio of credible information to propagandistic misinformation has not changed over time. But the same amazing aspects of the internet that keep you informed function to facilitate accessibility and spread of misinformation, too.
This is why the Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, or any other measure of knowledge gain for that matter, is not sufficient to conclude that people are better informed over time. Just because we cannot similarly measure the corresponding growth of misinformation (share of letters to the editor is obviously not a representative measure) shouldn’t be taken as evidence that it hasn’t grown. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam.
‘I think dumbass populists look at this and go “aha! the experts are all a cabal of liars and we can ignore them in favor of whatever batshit conspiracy theory we like!”’
No rebuttal from me whatsoever on that take.
I think this can all be true at the same time?
1. The unpopularity of far left views in the US isn't due to misinformation, those views are far left and
2. There was lots of misinformation in the past and that was bad and
3. Viral misinformation spread on social media now is also bad.
Like, there may be a moral panic and the left concluding that the reason the whole US doesn't agree with them is 'cuz of the misinformation' is dumb, but maybe we should still be somewhat concerned about robots spreading information based on viral spread (excuse me, engagement) and and no other criteria.
I don't know what a non-freaked-out discussion would look like, but I fear there is a real challenge whose sight we could lose track of if the discourse on our information environment gets too hysterical to take seriously.
I sometimes hear people say "every new medium has a rough launch and a panic and naysayers and it works out okay" but that's because people _do_ things to try to fix new problems.
Are people's misinformed opinions becoming more consistent?
This is a really weak piece (sorry). It’s bits of evidence with very questionable relevance, like people being able to identify the three branches of government, and personal anecdotes, like “I personally am better informed.”
That’s not to say you’re wrong, but my gut points in the opposite direction, for what are probably not much better reasons. Yes, it is easier to use the Internet to become more informed, but it is also easier to use the Internet to become *less* informed.
When presented with a piece of info that already aligns with your point of view, your question is “can I believe it?” When presented with something that doesn’t, your question is “must I believe it?” If you don’t want to believe climate change is real, there are literally thousands of websites to support your view, many of which appear very science-y.
There’s a reason that QAnon’s motto is “do your own research.” It’s that a lot of people are really, really bad at it. And for some weak anecdotal evidence, I’d point to the numerous online support groups that have sprung up for people who have lost family members to QAnon, or more prosaically, to Fox News. Almost everyone says their relatives transformed from nice, normal people, into obsessed, rageful cranks.
I’d also point to Facebook’s role in facilitating an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Most people are not sophisticated about where they get their information.
This reminds me of Snowden scoffing at the ridiculous idea that anyone would ever take medical advice from Joe Rogan, following that up by Rogan’s show logo. That of course, received a healthy mix of replies agreeing it was ridiculous, and replies saying they take medical advice from Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has said celebrities have called him for advice, celebrities have said they take his advice, doctors say their vaccine resistant patients overwhelmingly cite Joe Rogan, and thousands and thousands of people say they take his advice.
I also think people are missing something obvious, which is that Rogan had already built credibility as a fitness guru from his previous career. I have a low opinion of the advice fitness gurus give, and I’d say Joe Rogan is squarely in the middle of the dubiousness scale. But of course many people would be open to his wellness takes.
"I’d also point to Facebook’s role in facilitating an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Most people are not sophisticated about where they get their information."
Ah yes the human race, which famously had no ethnic cleansings before Facebook was invented. The radio has facilitated a number of genocides, most notoriously in Rwanda. Are you concerned about the dangers of radio? Or the printing press, or pamphlets, or television, or the telephone....?
I’m not sure what the point of your comment is. Facebook is one company, not “the radio.” And the fact that ethnic cleanings have occurred in the past doesn’t obviate the fact that the Myanmar military aggressively pushed disinformation about Muslims via Facebook. Most of Myanmar were new to phones, and their phones came preloaded with Facebook, which they took to be a real newsfeed. These people were new to getting information online. From a coldly analytical viewpoint, it was a great natural experiment demonstrating how people new to the wealth of (mis)information on the Internet handle it. And the answer is, poorly.
As for Rwanda, I think you are proving my point, which is that people are often led astray and that it’s good to have rules like “don’t promote genocide” on mass communication mediums. If I’d suggested we ban the internet, your comparison might make more sense. But I’m not. I’m saying the Internet can, and does make a lot of people less informed.
Facebook is a social media company- if Mark Zuckerberg had never been born, there would instead be a different social media company that's basically similar and does all the same things.
If it was 50 years ago and social media didn't exist, the Myanmar military would 'aggressively push disinformation' via television. If it was 100 years ago, they would've done so via the radio. If it was earlier, it would've been by word of mouth. Your fundamental mistake is imagining that the ethnic cleansing would not have taken place without Facebook existing. Seeing as 99% of all ethnic cleansings- of which there used to be vastly, vastly more!- took place pre-Facebook, I think what you're missing is that FB is simply the means Myanmar used to communicate in absence of some other means. 'Facebook determinism' is silly
If the misinformation problem is misinformation, does that mean The Real Problem is the Department of Homeland Security?
https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-february-07-2022
"The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors."
Now that it is so much easier to get good information, to locate primary sources, I often wonder if the media was always this awful.
The recent thing that I think of is coverage of “anti-CRT” bills. When I actually locate the bill and read the 2-3 relevant paragraphs, the descriptions that I’m getting in the media seem like dishonest histrionics. (Which started for me when I heard that Texas was going to make it impossible to teach about slavery and I thought “how did they word a bill that’s meant to produce that result?”)
Was this always the case, and I just didn’t have the ability to find the bill in a matter of minutes? Or has our media gotten worse in this regard?
The thing that opened my eyes was listening to the original Serial podcast. I kept waiting for the big innocence reveal, and then the guy just seemed guilty when it didn't come. Then people in the sub-reddit were able to obtain the trial transcripts through a FOIA and you could see what evidence the journalists chose to include, not focus on or exclude completely. It was shocking. I look at documentaries with a jaundiced eye now.
There should be a norm that whenever print journalists write about a bill, they link to the draft text of the bill. The internet is helpful in letting readers check whether legislation is being described honestly, but if it *is* being described honestly then why shouldn't the story provide a link?
Or court decisions. As a lawyer, I find it especially despicable when dedicated legal journalists (like Mark Joseph Stern at Slate) omit linking to the decision or even providing a case caption/number that would facilitate searching for the decision.
Not just bills - any time any journalist writes about any text, whether it's a bill, or a scientific paper, or a prize-winning local high student essay contest, they should link to the actual text itself.
What makes you think journalists (print or otherwise) take the time to understand what they’re writing about rather than merely parroting whatever talking points they’re being handed by some partisan figure?
I'm not sure it was always the case, but it has been that way for quite a long time, certainly during most/all of my adult working life, which began in the 90s. I do think it's worse now though.