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.
You forgot all the left wing ones. You’d also need to ban MSNBC, Vox, the Huffington Post, Buzz Feed, CNN, Vice, ABC, CBS, The Daily Beast, Salon, Newsweek, The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Post, Politico, NBC, The Atlantic, and dozens more.
Or is this not about misinformation, but rather information you like?
Their definition of the “left” section of their spectrum:
Sources with a Left AllSides Media Bias Rating™ display bias in ways that strongly align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas.
Even they recognize that liberal and progressive ideas are separate from leftwing ideas, but for some reason have chosen to lump them into a single group. Likely because there are very few leftwing media outlets and none of them have any real name recognition when compared to CNN, MSNBC, etc.
You underscore an issue with the left-right paradigm. Not all conservatives are the same either, yet people feel quite comfortable putting Daily Wire and Breitbart into the same bucket.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe we can have a fact-check community. People could post there if they find fake news or they could request fact-checks of information by others. It should be a community with strict rules on referring to sources, creating valid arguments, etc. and content should only be banned if it does not adhere to these rules.
A bit similar to what happens in scientific research. I will reject a paper if there are issues with its methods. I will not reject it based on its conclusions if the methods are fine. I think this works in academia, why wouldn’t it work with the right moderators here? There are still a lot of people who value truth above all else and in this way, they would have a space here.
When I want to read something relatively well verified and unbiased I reach for Wikipedia. They are doing a better job than any other source I found on the internet so far on keeping things clear of BS
Bias on Wikipedia is very bad now. One of the co-founders of Wikipedia has declared it “propaganda.” It doesn’t get more damning than that. Indeed, I’ve been involved in certain pages which have been butchered beyond recognition over the years thanks to power capture in the mod hierarchy. You wouldn’t BELIEVE how bad it is on many pages. Anything which is even vaguely contentious is guaranteed to be ideologically captured.
Wikipedia articles are supposed to summarize “reliable sources” and be neutral among them, but not give equal weight to “unreliable sources”.
Here’s the thing: people have by now figured out that if you first define sources that say things you like as “reliable” and sources that say things you don’t like as “unreliable”, then you can turn Wikipedia into a propaganda organ for whatever you want.
Wikipedia is neither an especially good source nor an especially bad one.
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.
Got banned from worldnews on lemmy.ml without being told why, while trying my utmost to be cordial in expressing my views (that is to say it is complicated and both sides carry fault) and avoiding finger pointing, so I’m not sure the mods are without bias either.
Maybe you’re referring to lemmy.world?
EDIT: “looks like you’re banned for Israeli apologia”. So yeah, this community has taken a formal stance and formal bias. Wouldn’t have commented if I’d have known that beforehand, as it is like going “communism suck Viva la capitalism” in lemmygrad.
re: your edit, I thought lemmygrad was created as literally the politics forum for lemmy.ml (which is the instance run by lemmy devs)? that’s my understanding from reading comments, though no special knowledge of the situation. It seems like most of the tankie takes I see are from lemmy.ml users now that lemmygrad.ml is defederated from lemmy.world.
It is Lemmy mali because the devs looked for a cheap instance, but the natives call it Lemmy Marxist leninist.
Frankly, they’re just authoritarians. You get more from reading Jacques Derrida or listening to solvaj zizek ranting about Barbie if you want to learn about socialism and communism.
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