[smsm42]

How do you ensure that "integrity" does not morph into "ban everything our groupthink says is wrong"? How do you ensure you're not coopted into an ideological or partisan propaganda/speech control efforts - a trap that so many "fact checkers" gladly fallen into?

[sayhar]

One thing we focus on is not really looking at content at all, but instead, behavior. Mostly -- spam.

One way to see what we're doing is glorified spamfighting. Except the spam sometimes isn't fake ray-bans, but is instead doctored videos that call for lynchings in India.

Here's more on the subject. (My ideas, not the full institute): https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/governing-social-media-city

[wolfram74]

One content agnostic approach to improving signal to noise is the tendency for deep chain sharing to be mostly false/misleading content. Introducing a forced copy-paste hurdle after the chain gets, say, 4 deep, would be content agnostic, but probably improve the quality of what get's spread.

[smsm42]

> the tendency for deep chain sharing to be mostly false/misleading content

Does it rely on some specific research? I mean I'm sure there's a lot of viral stories that are false. But there's also a lot of viral stories that are true - or at least no less true than what you'd commonly see on network TV or read in major newspapers, like NYT. I am not sure why it'd be obvious that something that is shared a lot is necessarily false.

[sayhar]

This is a great example of the kind of stuff we want to be talking about and looking at. Design changes that apply across the board.

You could imagine us swapping notes, and doing some research as a group, to see if this is indeed an idea that would work. And then spreading that information to everyone, including the platforms themselves.

[shug2k]

Transparency goes a long way towards addressing this concern. This is one area we are focused on - asking companies to be more transparent, both in their overall metrics and samples of public content, so we can have those debates as a society rather than behind closed doors.

[smsm42]

Transparency is not enough. If the decision is "we ban everything that the Troika we appointed finds not to its liking" - it's transparent, but not helpful and has nothing to do with "integrity". Transparency is good, but not enough.