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Comment on A few people are ruining the internet for the rest of us

No, not in context. They are talking about disimformation like, "using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19" from Musk. They say:

A mere 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news. Twelve accounts – known as the “disinformation dozen” – created most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic. These few hyperactive users produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant.

So if you cut out the the most divisive political accounts, you will not miss ANY actual news, but are likely to miss a huge pile of disinformation.

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p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

So if you cut out the the most divisive political accounts, you will not miss ANY actual news, but are likely to miss a huge pile of disinformation.

No, you just cut out the misinformation. If they are spreading vaccine misinformation on Facebook, fuck them. Cut them out. Never read a thing they put out again.

It’s not about divisiveness. It’s about critical thinking skills.

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- memfree@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I am not confident I or most other Americans can always tell what is misinformation. A recent bout of AI generated 'Am I the A-hole?' post on reddit recently got a bunch of people angry (Meta would say, 'highly engaged') because enough of them though the stories might be true.
  
  When the Fukishima power plant got hit by a tidal wave, I foolishly believed an 'expert' on TV that day who said the plant was designed so that lead shielding hoods would automatically cover the rods in the event of power loss. Well THAT didn't happen. I no longer remember who the 'expert' was, so he could fool me again. Maybe he has.
  
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  - p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    That’s always been the case. Grifters grift, and they have been grifting for thousands of years.
    
    You’re never going to find it 100%, but you can at least go back and blacklist who you have seen to be lying. Reputation is more important than ever. Far too many random strangers have been believing every word from other random strangers. This is why I don’t understand TikTok or other short-form video formats. Why would you take advice from some creator you’ve only seen once?
    
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t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Mis/disinformation is not the same as “divisive political content”. Political content can be both true, and divisive (e.g. Trump being a pedophile). Something that is accepted by the majority may still be misinformation, yet not be divisive.

Truthfulness determines whether something is misinformation. How much something matches a group’s beliefs determines whether it is divisive: if everyone agreed that the world was flat, that would not be divisive to state, but it would be misinformation.

Conflating them entrenches the perception that the most widely-held, non-“divisive” viewpoint must not be misinformation.

Go check out Truth Social if you want to see what a space where only “non-divisive” (to them) but near-total misinformation looks like.

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- memfree@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I agree that as categories, the are different things, just as 'tools' are not the same as 'weapons', but ignoring the perncious overlap borders on criminal. If you follow actual news sites and reporters but omit the likes of Musk, you will still see Musk quoted, but it is more likely to be properly discredited where needed. At no point does the article suggest you avoid all partisan content, it simply says the most divisive is likely to hurt us all. You know the platforms profit from engagement, so they'll promote the worst offenders' content upward, but we don't have to take that bait.
  
  The accounts with the MOST divisive political content are unlikely to be your best source of information. You might hate Rachel Maddow or Charlie Kirk, but you''ll be better off getting news from a generic MSNBC or FOX feed than either personality. Better still, pick BBC, Reuters, and AlJazeera to see a variety of views.
  
  A reverse example of context: Project 2025 never explicitly says anything about IVF, but it repeatedly talks about human life "from conception to natural death", which would mean IVF would be problematic. If you try quoting just the last sentence in this chunk, 'day one' might be interpreted as birth, but in context, 'day one' is obviously conception:
  
  From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity
  and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development,
  race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities
  are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural
  death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.
  
  P.S. Do we agree that Bernie Sanders is NOT divisive? That the majority of actual people agree with most of what Bernie says, and it is only a few rich interests that object?
  
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  - t3rmit3@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    P.S. Do we agree that Bernie Sanders is NOT divisive? That the majority of actual people agree with most of what Bernie says, and it is only a few rich interests that object?
    
    I think we probably agree that Bernie Sanders is correct, and that most people want for themselves what he says we should all have, but I don’t think he would necessarily be considered “non-divisive” by these standards if his social media account were more prolific.
    
    I think perhaps where you and I may disagree, is that I don’t think political animosity is intrinsically bad, only misplaced political animosity. We should have animosity towards people intentionally causing harm.
    
    I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing yet another source telling people that now is the time to defuse and become less polarized to politics, right when Trump is in the process of deporting thousands of people and setting up concentration camps.
    
    Yes, the real war is the class war, but even if the foot soldiers of the oligarchy shouldn’t be working class people, they are. It’s not billionaires out there in ICE uniforms, or getting deputized or joining bounty hunter groups to arrest brown people, or reporting brown people to ICE. That’s also where the “for themselves” bit that I emphasized comes in, because the truth is that there are a LOT of working class people who are opposed to helping others (especially along racial or religious lines), and helping others is the core of solidarity. Not all problems can be solved with class consciousness.
    
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    memfree@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I, too, know the trend of criminal U.S. administrations to tell the other side to tone it down and just go with the President. The current administration makes me more outraged than post-9/11 when we knew the hijackers were Saudis, we knew bin Laden was around Afghanistan/Pakistan, and we had a team of Nuclear inspectors WITHIN Iraq saying they'd found no evidence of such weapons, yet a few days before their official report was finished, Bush declares war on Iraq? With no exit strategy? When Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
    
    Rather than suggesting we all calm down, or that true patriots back the President, I'm simply seeing the article's point in asking people to stop following the top, say, 2% most divisive voices. It is a sad truth that the worst liars will get their followers to disbelieve Dr. Fauci such that he becomes divisive through no fault of his own, but he won't hit the critical 'worst' list because he's not spouting vitriol of his own.
    
    As far as Bernie goes, there were a good number of Bernie backers at Trump rallies, so I honestly doubt that anyone but moneyed think tanks have much bad to say about him.
    
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