[legerdemain]

What you call "bad information" I call "a difference of opinion." And I call your attempts to institute mass re-education in "digital literacy" to "combat" this "bad information" suppression of free thought and oppression of contrarian and non-mainstream voices.

[Syonyk]

It depends heavily on what you're calling "bad information."

There are certainly cases where there's a difference of opinion - different interpretations of some external reality.

But there is also "bad information" in the form of "literally made up, entirely, with no basis in reality." There exist clickfarms that do literally this - make up fictions for some "legitimate sounding news site" for nothing beyond the ad revenue of driving people to those sites on social media platforms.

"Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both secretly space aliens from a satellite orbiting Alpha Centauri and are here to supervise the farming of US citizens to be turned into cattle feed for alien cows" would be the sort of "totally fake" thing I'm referring to - nothing in that statement stands any real chance of being true (I hope... it's hard to outpace reality in absurdity some weeks), but plenty of similarly absurd articles exist on the internet. A lot of them get clicks, some of them get an awful lot of clicks.

Teaching student to be able to properly analyze an information source goes a long way. Though just having the browser warn you when your "news" site was registered last week would also help a lot...

[Gunax]

I don't think anyone has a problem with what we might call objective facts.

The issue is that there is a feeling that the 'objective facts' narrative is simply being used as a Trojan Horse to teach things which are much more nuanced (like the effect and pervasiveness of racism), and treating any questioning or disagreement as wrongthink which much be corrected.

Not saying this narrative is true per se, that's just how its being perceived.

[creaghpatr]

World Weekly News still available at your local grocery store checkout as far as I know. That was how I learned what "fake news" was as a kid, the fictional headline you mentioned is totally game for that magazine. In fact most of their covers were some blend of politics, sex, and aliens.

But I'm sure some people believe it or whatever. Doesn't make it anymore credible now that it's on the internet.

[gonehome]

The internet has two things World Weekly News doesn't though - scale, and very sophisticated targeting.

A lot of the misinformation in 2016 came from scammers in (I think) Madagascar driving traffic to adfarm blogs with nonsense via FB. They leveraged FB's engagement algorithms to spread viral misinformation to drive traffic. They tried lies targeting the left and the right, but the lies targeting the right spread more easily so they focused attention there.

FB's engagement algorithms leverage confirmation bias in an attempt to spread things the most. I don't think they set out to do this necessarily, but if you measure viral spread and optimize for it - this is what you get.

With political ads, focused targeting at scale is a new type of very effective manipulation that's had a large amount of intellectual capital poured into it. I think it's worth special consideration when considering its effect/risk.

Steven Levy's book was a great (and fair) read on this: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551043/facebook-by-...

[CountDrewku]

Yep the problem is the so called "bad information" is mostly just stuff the left dislikes due to Trump and not necessarily false. This is easy to see now that Biden is doing just as badly with immigration and even worse is some regards but now suddenly it's not an issue we need to be concerned with.

It's incredibly obvious that even factual information is being regarded as false if it doesn't align with a certain agenda. This is where it gets pretty scary and basically you're telling people you want their children in a re-education camp to make sure they fall in line. It's the opposite of the critical thinking they're supposedly pushing.

[Leparamour]

I think your comment will be downvoted to invisibility for using the trigger words "Trump" and "the left" but you're not wrong. As a European we experience the political trickle-down of "critical race theory" from the US cultural war even if our history is completely different. And as an outsider, the double-standard in reporting and tone on Trump vs. Biden is disturbing to see.

[gonehome]

CRT specifically may be largely junk (I think it is), but the parent comment is not correct.

Trump's "Zero Tolerance" immigration policy intentionally separated mothers and their children at the border with the intent being deterrence. Cruelty was the intended goal of that policy to dissuade people from coming to the border. Previously adults and children would only be separated if border patrol suspected abuse (child trafficking).

Some children have yet to be reunited with their parents (and may never be) because the Trump administration failed to keep records (and frankly didn't care).

The "remain in mexico" policy was intended to prevent those crossing the border to be able to exercise their legal right to claim asylum.

Immigration policy is complex, dealing with desperate people fleeing their country to enter the US is not easy. That doesn't make the Trump administration policy equivalent to the difficulties Biden is experiencing on the border. Intent and policy decisions matter.

This is one specific example, but there are many others.

[CountDrewku]

You realize there are thousands of children being housed without their parents currently right? That's a direct result of Biden making it appear that anyone can just walk right across the border now because he's so friendly and supportive of illegal immigration. In my opinion that's much worse than Trump dissuading people from the start. People are dying and Biden has incited a mass immigration crisis.

Regardless of that specific issue this is the main problem with "bad information". I and many people do not agree with your assessment and I also don't agree you have the right to say definitively what Biden is doing is better and then brainwash our children into believing it by declaring it disinformation when they don't agree.

This quote from the article is enough for me to know it's not about disinformation at all but more about pushing an agenda: "The U.S. intelligence community found that in both the 2020 and 2016 elections, Russia employed a range of online methods in an attempt to help former President Donald Trump, and undermine his Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and President Biden." Trump was cleared by the FBI and that investigation returned no evidence to support this. It's equivalent to declaring the election was stolen in 2020 but again we see it's not an issue since it comes from the "chosen" side.

[gonehome]

Obama was coined the “deporter in chief” while in office and Biden has similarly said he will deport people who cross the border illegally.

The difference is in intentional cruelty and the policy around how you deal with the problem. Housing minors that crossed without parents is not the same as forcibly and intentionally separating parents and children.

Immigration crisis causes are complex and have to do with the state of countries south of the US. You’d probably agree that Trump’s rhetoric didn’t incite “the caravan” yet they came anyway. Biden’s rhetoric against border crossing has been strict, he’s just not going to violate their rights.

Russia did have a preference for Trump and worked to help him (as detailed in the FBI’s report with lots of evidence to support this). Trump’s actions did not rise to the level of criminal conspiracy, but they did rise to the level of obstruction of justice (also detailed in the report), but ultimately that’s a determination that must be made by Congress to whom the report deferred.

This was a decision made based on an interpretation of fairness based on the OLC opinion (basically that it’d be wrong to assert guilt when you can’t charge). So it was left to Congress to interpret.

[CountDrewku]

You're avoiding my main point and discussing individual subjective stances.

[CountDrewku]

"downvoted to invisibility for using the trigger words "Trump" and "the left" but you're not wrong."

Yep but it just reinforces my point so let them. Notice they don't comment because they don't really have a leg to stand on.