[nickpsecurity]

" Comments are more like what goes on with coffee after the research presentation. They're about saying what you think, asking questions, correcting other comments, correcting the article, pointing to other articles. "

I would like that to be the default approach to how comments are handled. It's pretty much what we're doing here. On a lot of social media especially, it's done differently where they're spreading what they believe is the truth to get others to believe it. It's often reposted by many of those others. Further, I've seen polls showing most people on left and right are getting their news from social media and websites these days. These comments and shares reinforce the echo chambers they're in where they hit them before the corporate media does.

"It's true that misinformation and conspiracy theories spread rapidly but, crucially, so does the correction of error, especially older and more parochial errors, which may even need to spread a bit before this can happen."

Facebook's studies found the opposite: misinformation spreads far and wide while retractions happened for under half of it. I think it was in 30-40% range. Misinformation outperforms corrections on the Internet. That wasn't as much a problem in the early days but not people are trusting misinformation more because it often looks legit and comes from friends. Instead of lies, it's often just selective presentation of the truth where other information is filtered out. That's why it's more effective.