What can we do, as lemmy users, to fight fake news being pushed in the platform?
I see a lot of posts lately, mainly in ‘world news’ communities, that when I investigate their source, I cannot come to any other conclostion that purposefully spreading of fake news and propaganda on lemmy.
I love this platform and want to see it thrive, but the fact that these kind of posts can so easily populate my feed is disturbing.
Post fact-checks (links a bonus) in the comments, which are few enough to scroll and check. That’s where I look for paywall bypasses, TLDRs and will post a screed for additional context if I have opinions that everyone should know.
Honestly? Don’t participate. Don’t use the platform and just quit with all social media because it cannot be stopped at this point. It takes far too much effort and time to battle all this crap.
Defederate from the tankie instances (including .ml). This Israel thing has really show not only how willing these places are to do straight up information warfare, but also how they’ve amplified an extremely chilling and alarmingly violent minority.
First, you should acknowledge that all sources are biased to a certain degree, some more than others. Any source that claim to always be “Fair and Balanced” like Fox News is usually anything but. When looking at a news article you should always ask yourself these questions:
What idea/agenda is the author/source trying to express?
Who benefits (monetarily or otherwise) from the expression of this idea?
Based on what you know, are there any contradictions in these ideas? (ESPECIALLY self-contradictions.)
Source reliability is only a small part of the equation as appeal to authority is usually overvalued:if Fox News says the Earth revolves around the Sun, that statement doesn’t suddenly become false. To determine the veracity of an article is simple, but not easy: you can only derive the truth from hard facts. You should look at the primary source and evidences and ask yourself:
Are there any hard verificable evidence such as photos, videos, or other direct documentations?
Are there only unverifiable, anecdotal, and/or circumstantial claims and evidences for this?
What’s the original source from which the claims were made?
This should give you a good framework of spotting fake news.
First step would be tagging posts/comments, to clearly separate ones meant as pure opinion from ones meant as a factual claim. Then tagging for sourced/unsourced/disputed/misleading/omitting crucial details, etc. claims. Then tagging things like how confident the poster feels about what they’re saying (e.g. from “I heard it somewhere” to “I’ve seen it with my own eyes on multiple occasions”)
Then you would need easy to inspect metadata showing the sourcing chain all the way to the origin. And ability to comment on that (e.g. if some source’s claims are misinterpreted and the source doesn’t actually claim the thing).
Then you would need the people to actually care about facts, even if the facts go against their existing beliefs or preferences.
Also people need to be able to think more with varying degrees of uncertainty built-in, not just “this is definitely true”/“this is definitely false” (unless there is enough material to back that up).
Don’t follow news feeds on any social platforms including lemmy. Find a reliable source. These billion dollar platforms like Facebook can’t moderate every fake news, lemmy has no chance.
It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they don’t have a need to. Enticing news, fake or otherwise, keeps people engaged, commenting, posting, starting flame wars, and they do all of it on the platform. Somebody at some point noticed that users don’t mind fake news (as in they don’t leave the platform as long as there is fake news posted there), and the potential ‘hit’ to reputation is well balanced by the boost in engagement they see.
Lemmy, on the other hand, might not have the same incentive (yet?) to keep spreading bullshit for the sake of getting firemen and arsonists locked in a neverending game.
Yep, and you might get clowned on in the comments, fairly or unfairly, but all you can do in any media aggregate forum is fact check and try to debunk.
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