[tailrecursion]

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong?

The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.)

Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can work, and the left doesn't?

[maxerickson]

The problem isn't "beliefs that are wrong", the problem is that it's Calvinball.

Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof.

Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal.

Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident.

Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it.

And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0] always applies.

By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation.

Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle

[elektrontamer]

Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put pressure on social media companies to supress it.

[macintux]

> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.

If they’ve internalized/amplified it, they’ll believe the source, and disregard the contradictory information.

This has been well-established over the last, oh, 10 years. Facts are irrelevant if you can choose your own sources.

[the_optimist]

This “sounds smart” and I’m sure it circulates well in conversation. In practice, no. The point of “facts” is to identify useful truths that guide decisions. When some portion of the distribution of people identify misalignment, which is inevitable—not optional—then they will true up.

[macintux]

4 years on and a significant proportion of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just how many years will it take for that to true up?

[tailrecursion]

I notice you don't make a definite claim that it wasn't stolen. You're annoyed by the fact others believe it was, based on what you feel is insufficient evidence, yes?

But if you can prove it wasn't, I'm interested

[the_optimist]

It is absolutely fantastic that this assertion draws ire from those who have no substantial response. It is intended to poke you directly in the eyeballs. That crowd so often favors censorship to protect the same.

If you have a substantial response, cast it forth.

[nmz]

Your claim is not false, but not universally true either, the counter is alex jones, the flat earth movement, religion as well, you can spend nearly an infinity believing in lies. The human brain is quite malleable to lies.

[elektrontamer]

So what? People have the right to be wrong and ignorant. It's far better than having The Ministry of Tru... sorry I mean Disinformation Governance Board. Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually. For example consider the Iraq war, a war the american public was rushed into without the free flow of information, something you seem keen on, but now that the public has access to info the same republican base that was in support of the war now hates war hawks like john bolton.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually

Eventually, yes, but until it happens, bodies are piling up.

EDIT: Also, FWIW, the truth is often exposed nearly immediately, yet for some people, once they have chosen to believe the lie, they can't be convinced of the truth.

[nmz]

If all you believe are lies, what's the difference?

[2c2c2c]

80% of republicans believe 2020 was stolen.

[jkubicek]

don't worry, community notes on Twitter will fix this /s

[lupusreal]

Reddit's censorship surely will.

[thomaslord]

It's well established that adults who read incorrect information frequently don't find out it was wrong and become more skeptical of the source. Some people operate that way, but it's a small minority unfortunately.

In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information?

Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0]

Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets.

Speech has consequences.

> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.

...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this.

If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term.

Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

[elektrontamer]

Sorry but I'm not willing to live in an insane orwellian world just so your grandma gets her vaccine. It's her family's responsiblity to convince her and if she still refuses shes an adult she has the right to refuse treatment and vaccines.

As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences.

What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?

[Sohcahtoa82]

> Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose

You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.

I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.

Who gets to decide what is misinformation is an entirely different issue. But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation. Again, set aside the question of "Well, who decides what is misinformation?" and consider just the mere concept of it.

[elektrontamer]

> You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.

Tyranny is the only alternative to free speech. I just don't see it ending in any other way.

> I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.

Awesome! Then we can stop making such a big deal out of misinformation and protect free speech.

> But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation.

Yes lying is unethical it's been established thousands of years ago.

[tailrecursion]

> Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.

[seadan83]

Yes, but that correction doesn't reach everyone. Again thus, "speech has consequences"

[tailrecursion]

Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general.

How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?

I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> How do you explain that there are smart people who [..] respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"

Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive.

All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies.

> I don't suppose you know of a solution

Nope. :-(

Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all.

> The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.

Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced!

In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.

[hughesjj]

I'm looking back with how much teenage edgelord/ironic/sarcastic speech that was rampant in my youth covered for people who actually held horrible views like white nationalism. I thought it was all just shock humor. I know better now, but I'm worried about that persisting in kids. I think it's always been that way. I don't know how to mitigate it.

[threeseed]

Community notes isn’t scalable.

So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished.

Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.

[tailrecursion]

I agree with the first part totally, and you're probably right I invented something there. I only meant that free speech / "more information helps" seems to resonate with the right, and censorship seems to resonate with the left. Not so?

[actionfromafar]

Censorship of books seem to resonate well with the right.

[exodust]

And rewriting books resonates with the left. Is this a game of left/right tennis I've walked into?

[hughesjj]

Depends what you mean in regards to rewriting. If there's a position that runs counter to our current scientific consensus, I think it should be updated to reflect the current consensus, but when I was reading my history/physics books they would cover what people believed at a particular time period. I don't see any issue with that. We're always learning more about the world around us. We are not an omniscient species.

Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.

[exodust]

Sounds like you haven't heard of the re-writing of books in the interest of over-enthusiastic DEI. There's non-fiction and fiction examples. Salman Rushdie described it as "absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed" [1].

Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work.

[1] https://x.com/SalmanRushdie/status/1627075835525210113

[seadan83]

Neither the left nor right are monolithic enough to make those generalizations. The anti-communism suppression of the McCarthy era is a counter-example of that resonance & plenty of left wing examples of the exact idea of "more speech is what is needed to extinguish bad ideas." Those are counter examples to demonstrate it is not a monolithic group in neither time nor space.

[exodust]

> "Community notes isn’t scalable."

Of course it's scalable. Community notes are written by people, so increasing the amount of people writing notes means it's scalable. Users find the added context helpful, so more notes are rated by more people more often. That's the definition of scale.

> the value of it has long since diminished.

No. The note remains forever on the tweet. There is no "diminishing". Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note. Our own Prime Minister here in Australia has had a few of his posts community noted. Politicians love to make bold claims about how awesome they are. They are note magnets. It's not a perfect system, but it's a good system.

[seadan83]

> Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note.

Having read or seen a post seems to be the most important part. That is not defined as part of "interacted". AFAIK, most X posts are viewed once and then never viewed again. It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post. Hence, the value is diminished since the majority of people that read a post are never informed of the community note.

Per X: "Community Notes sends notifications to everyone who has replied to, Liked or reposted a post after a note starts showing on it." [1]

[1] https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/contributing/notificat...

[exodust]

> It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post...Hence, the value is diminished

Are you claiming we're in "information danger" because community notes isn't there to watch people post things in real time? Exactly how much of a pre-school do you want the internet to be? Do you want a school teacher looking over your shoulder as you type?

As you should know, interaction with a post by liking or replying, means the post had the most impression on that reader. The people you're worried about who don't interact, you have zero data on. You don't know whether they disagreed with the post, disbelieved or otherwise unaffected by the post. In fact, we do have some data. The post made such little impression that they didn't bother liking or replying.

People are not damaged goods after reading an untrue post online. The internet contains endless examples of disputed information, corrected only after the first post is read. For example, right here on HN. This place historically contains the following pattern:

  "I think X should Y because Z"
  Later that day or week, someone counters:
  "actually, you haven't considered A or B in your reasoning of Z, which points to Y being inadequate". 

In other words, the claim or suggestion that community notes is "diminished" because it isn't correcting misinformation as it spills from our keyboards, is an irrational claim.