Aknowledge that you really only have control over yourself.
Be more cynical. Exercise doubt, especially about things you might agree with.
Check sources, or at least read the article.
Accept that you’re probably not going to change anyone’s mind. Learn to walk away from pointless arguments.
impossible, when the platform itself is the one enabling or promoting, google/youtube, meta all allows it and encourages because its more advertisement money, plus it shores up male/right wing voters which will benefit the companies in the long run in the form of low/non-existent taxes plus tax havens, they think long term. “left leaning”(that is not annoying tankie rhetoric) content is almost universally quashed or heavily astroturfed on most SOCIAL media.
Reddit is getting there. Only way is to host your own forum ,and have controls, probably some form automation to block trolls spammers. the users should be cognizant what is being said and fact checking themselves to prevent themselves from being drawn into disinformation/misinformation.
male/right wing
Hahaha. “male slash right-wing” what are you on about
Linking to sources, that is a big one. Even something as honest as “I read it off this Wikipedia page [link]” goes a long way in showing that the poster is not pulling an idea out of their ass.
I will always prefer having debates where both sides cite their information, even if there isn’t a satisfying agreement at the end. Plus, faulty sources can be debunked when more eyes are able to scrutinize it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum:
“I put it into chatGPT and it said George Soros is funding ISIS to raid Epstein Island.”
Still more credibility if you cite it rather than copy+paste XD
(And we can laugh at the poster who decided that was a valid source)
Media literacy is an old and important topic. Are you asking for an introduction to it?
Misinformation is part of the nature of social media and can’t be fixed. Stupid people are stupid. There are A LOT of them on social media. The dishonest take advantage of the stupid to spread misinformation. The only way to counteract it is to have gatekeeping, which will crush the user count and block out the biggest users, and network effect will funnel most of the rest into the biggest. (i.e. the one with the most lenient gatekeeping)
The only hope is that people realize how stupid, unrepresentative, and unsuitable social media discourse is. It’s a place to find funny pictures of cats and boobs. Looking to it for anything serious, or pretending what you see there is representative of anything, is pointless at best and likely harmful.
This problem is hardly an issue on this platform.
LOLOL – This platform is just as bad as Reddit for misinformation. It’s usually silly shit, but it’s almost always 90% truth laced with 10% lie. The fact that you believe it’s somehow immune to this is just testament to how hard it is for people to see this kind of thing clearly when it’s “on their side”. Problem is, any time it’s called out, people get massively downvoted for it, so people have stopped calling it out.
Do you have any examples?
Recently there was a news story about how people earning 150k were struggling financially. Even just reading the article was enough to know the idea was bullshit (which is probably why the headline used such mealy-mouthed language). But that did not stop a bunch of users from prognosticating about how terrible the economy is and how we are on the verge of collapse.
The idea that households earning more than 150k are struggling is objectively wrong. They are not. But that idea is consistent with the political sentiments of users here ( billionaires vs everyone else in a zero sum economy ) so it gets traction.
People pass around trash sources like the new republic which often just copies other news outlets but reframes stories to be consistent with lefty sentiments about whatever current events are going on.
In one community I encountered an image macro criticizing a judge for making a ruling against some plaintiffs suing Trump that was completely divorced from any context, making it appear the judge was in the tank for trump when, if you knew even a little about her, or the ruling you would immediately recognize that idea as bullshit.
Those are just a few examples off the top of my head
That news is basically about how people who used to earn 150k per year that since losing their job and can’t find one, thus can’t keep up with their mortgage and debt. What’s so fake about it? You sure we read the same news?
Easily the one I see the most is Trump talking about “they rigged the election and now I’m here.” – I’m pointing out this one specifically, because any dunderhead dipshit knows from context what he’s talking about, but lemmy absolutely dives into the shallow end with it…
He’s clearly making the claim that Dems rigged the 2020 election, and because of that, he’s president in 2024 when … I dunno - whatever 2 events are happening. (Fifa or some shit?) But EVERY fucking time on Lemmy it’s like “See he’s admitting he rigged the election!” and everyone just meep meeps into agreeance.
That’s just one off the top of my head, and that’s with blocking most politics-based subs. If lemmy can’t even read or gather context from a sentence correctly – There’s no hope for the world.
Could the lemmings be referring to the old trope where some loudmouth (usually a conservative) bangs on about an issue with some minority group ad nauseum and then some time later it turns out they were actually a perpetrator of the thing they banged on about, ie every accusation is an admission of guilt?
In this case, no - comments in these usually directly infer that he’s saying that the rigged election was his team. There’s no mistaking it. They aren’t pointing at the “every accusation is a confession” bit that conservatives usually do, but many of them have commented things like “this is a direct confession, jail him now!” sadly, unironically.
While I agree the 2024 election definitely had fraud, and they’re further attempting to now outright rig the midterms, the particular video I’m referring to wasn’t the direct confession that some of these morons think it is.
And the problem also resides in the fact that this is only a single example…of many…
As a mod for a couple of the biggest communities… gestures to everything
Hardly an issue on Lemmy?
Or does it just feel that way when everyone around you has the same views?
I just wanna know: What do you do when talking to a friend IRL, face to face, and they tell you something that isn’t true?
While there may aftually be people trying to push an agenda, I suspect 90% or more people who “spread misinformation online” are just regular old idiots.
People don’t suddenly stop being people just because they have a computer and anonimity. And a lot of people are just misinformed.
Best way to stop misinformation online? Same as it is offline: Through better fucking education.
I say “huh. I hadn’t heard that one. Let me look it up. … Ohh no, that turned out to be fake. It’s getting so hard to tell these days. Just the other day I was reading…” And then start rambling about another topic. It prevents them from sitting with the uncomfortable feeling of being an idiot.
It’s a pretty regulaely a big problem here.
But to answer your question, just check sources, verify with a second outlet, and call it out when you see it. That’s all you can do on an individual level.
Teach people how to cite appropriately.
We learned how to do it in middle school, but I can tell most of my adult peers either didn’t pay attention or forgot.
Free speech. The only way to combat bad ideas is with better ones.
What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media? […]
Regarding my own content: I do my best to cite any claim that I make, no matter how trivial. If I make a statement for which I lack confidence in its veracity, I do my best to convey that uncertainty. I do my best to convey explicitly whether a statement is a joke, or sarcasm.
Fundamentally, my approach to this issue is based on this quote:
Rationality is not a character trait, it’s a process. If you fool yourself into believing that you’re rational by default, you open yourself up to the most irrational thinking. [1]
Regarding the content of others: If I come across something that I believe to be false, I try to politely respond to it with a sufficiently and honestly cited statement explaining why I think it is false. If I come across something of unknown veracity/clarity, I try to politely challenge the individual responsible to clarify their intent/meaning.
For clarity, I have no evidence to support that what I’m doing is an effective means to this end, but I want to believe that it’s helping in at least some small way.
References
- Type: Comment. Author: “@The8BitPianist”. Publisher: [Type: Post (Video). Title: “On These Questions, Smarter People Do Worse”. Author: “Veritasium” (“@veritasium”). Publisher: YouTube. Published: 2024-11-04T16:48:03Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno.]. Published: 2024-11-04T09:06:26Z. Accessed: 2025-03-29T07:48Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno&lc=Ugy6vV7Z3EeFHkdfbHl4AaABAg.
What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media?
step 1. misinformation is a problem on every platform. full stop.
I think what you mean is maliciously manufactured information. still, I believe Lemmy is subject to it.
I believe that both types can be effectively dispatched by effectively moderating the community, but not in the sense that you might be thinking.
I believe that we are looking at community moderation from the wrong direction. today, the goal of the mod is to prune and remove undesired content and users. this creates high overhead and operational costs. it also increases chances for corruption and community instability. look no further than Reddit and lemmy for this where we have a handful of mods that are in-charge of multiple communities. who put them there? how do you remove them should they no longer have the communities best interests in mind? what power do I have as a user to bring attention to corruption?
I believe that if we flip the role of moderators to be instead guardians of what the community accepts instead of what they can see it greatly reduces the strain on mods and increases community involvement.
we already use a mechanism of up/down vote. should content hit a threshold below community standards, it’s removed from view. should that user continue to receive below par results from inside the community, they are silenced. these par grades are rolling, so they would be able to interact within the community again after some time but continued abuse of the community could result in permanent silencing. should a user be unjustly silenced due to abuse, mod intervention is necessary. this would then flag the downvoters for abuse demerits and once a demerit threshold is hit, are silenced.
notice I keep saying silenced instead of blocked? that’s because we shouldn’t block their access to content or the community or even let them know nobody is seeing their content. in the case of malicious users/bots. the more time wasted on screaming into a void the less time wasted on corrupting another community. in-fact, I propose we allow these silenced users to interact with each other where they can continue to toxify and abuse each other in a spiraling chain of abuse that eventually results in their permanent silencing. all the while, the community governs itself and the users hum along unaware of what’s going on in the background.
IMO it’s up to the community to decide what is and isn’t acceptable and mods are simply users within that community and are mechanisms to ensure voting abuse is kept in check.
Great idea but tough to keep people from gaming it
genuinely curious of how would they game it?
of course there’s a way to game it, but I think it’s a far better solution than what social media platforms are doing currently and gives more options than figuratively amputate parts of community to save itself.
If I need 10 downvotes to make you disappear then I only need 10 Smurf accounts.
At the same time, 10 might be a large portion of some communities while miniscule in others.
I suppose you limit votes to those in the specific community, but then you’d have to track their activity to see if they’re real or just griefing, and track activity in relation to others to see if they’re independent or all grief together. And moderators would need tools to not only discover but to manage briefing, to configure sensitivity
you’re right. the threshold is entirely dependent on the size of the community. it would probably be derived from some part of community subscribers and user interactions for the week/month.
should a comment be overwhelmingly positive that would offset the threshold further.
in regards to griefing, if a comment or post is overwhelmingly upvoted and hits the downvote threshold that’s when mods step in to investigate and make a decision. if it’s found to not break rules or is beneficial to the community all downvoters are issued a demerit. after so many demerits those users are silenced in the community and follow through typical “cool down” processes or are permanently silenced for continued abuse.
the same could be done for the flip-side where comments are upvote skewed.
in this way, the community content is curated by the community and nurtured by the mods.
appeals could be implemented for users whom have been silenced and fell through the cracks, and further action could be taken against mods that routinely abuse or game the system by the admins.
I think it would also be beneficial to remove the concept of usernames from content. they would still exist for administrative purposes and to identify problem users, but I think communities would benefit from the “double blind” test. there’s been plenty of times I have been downvoted just because of a previous interaction. also the same, I have upvoted because of a well known user or previous interaction with that user.
it’s important to note this would change the psychological point of upvote and downvotes. currently they’re used in more of an “I agree with” or “I cannot accept that”. using the rules I’ve brought up would require users to understand they have just as much to risk for upvoting or downvoting content. so when a user casts their vote, they truly believe it’s in the interests of the community at large and they want that kind of content within the community. to downvote means they think the content doesn’t meet the criteria for the community. should users continue to arbitrarily upvote or downvote based on their personal preferences instead of community based objectivity, they might find themselves silenced from the community.
it’s based on the principles of “what is good for society is good for me” and silences anyone in the community that doesn’t meet the standards of that community.
for example, a community that is strictly for women wouldn’t need to block men. as soon as a man would self identify or share ideas that aren’t respondent to the community they would be silenced pretty quickly. some women might even be silenced but they would undoubtedly have shared ideas that were rejected by the community at large. this mimics the self-regulation that society has used for thousands of years IMO.
I think we need to stop looking at social networks as platforms for the individuals and look at them as platforms for the community as a whole. that’s really the only way we can block toxicity and misinformation from our communities. undoubtedly it will create echo chambers
If we want to go the route of the Responsibility of the Individual: Resolve to not get your political etc. news from social media. Draw a line for yourself: cool to get gaming news from random influencers online? Probably. News about global events? At this point might be better for most people’s mental health to ignore them and focus more locally. However, read how to read a book, make your best effort at finding a reputable news organization and check those for news if you must have them. On same vein, if you don’t read at least some article about an event being discussed on social media, DON’T COMMENT. Don’t engage with that post. If it really grabs at you, go find an article about it from a trusted source, and depending on how much it animates you, try to get a bigger picture of the event. Assume that vast majority of ALL CONTENT online is currently incentivized to engage you - to capture your attention, which is actually the most valuable asset you have. Where you put your attention will define how you feel about your life. It’s highly advicable to put it where you feel love.
Responsibility of the Collective: Moving in hierarchies, we can start demanding that social media moderators (or whatever passes for those in any given site) prevent misinformation as much as possible. Try to only join communities that have mods that do this. Failing that, demand social media platforms prevent misinformation. Failing that, we can demand the government does more to prevent misinformation. All of those solutions have significant issues, one of them being they are all very incentivized to capture the attenttion of as many people as possible. Doesn’t matter what the exact motivation is - it could be a geneinly good one. A news organization uses social media tactics to get the views so that their actually very factual and dilligently compiled articles get the spread. Or, they could be looking to drive their political agenda - which they necessarily do anyway because desire to be factual and as neutral as possible is a stance as well. One that may run afoul of the interests of some government that doesn’t value freedom of press - which is very dangerous and you need to think hard for yourself how you feel about the idea of the government limiting what kind of information you can access. For the purposes of making this shorter, you can regard massive social media platforms as virtual governments too. In fact, it would be a good idea in general.
The thing with misinformation is that many people who talk about it subtly think that they are above it themselves. They’re thinking that they know they’re not subject to propaganda and manipulation but it’s the other poor fools that need to be protected from it. It’s the Qanon and Antivaxxers. But you know better, you know how to dig deeper into massively complicated global topics and find out what the true and right opinion about them is. You can’t. Not even if we weren’t in the middle of multiple fucking information wars. If you don’t like the idea of individual responsibility though, because “most people aren’t going to do it” - your best bet at getting a collective response is a group of individuals coming together under the same ideal. It’ll happen sooner or later anyway and there’s going to be plenty of suffering before either way.
we can start demanding that social media moderators (or whatever passes for those in any given site) prevent misinformation as much as possible.
Yeah, but how are you expecting moderators to determine what is and isn’t misinformation?
That’s one of the many issues with expecting a collective resolution. Question is: why do people feel they need to be able to discuss issues way beyond their understanding and personal experience online with others who also don’t know much about it? If actually done well, moderation is a full time job but nobody is interested in paying a bunch of online jannies to clean their space.
That’s why I favor individual responsibility, and opting out of the possibility of being exposed to (or perpetuating) misinformation. Maybe in the future we can have forums for verified experts of a field, where regular people can have discussions with them and ask questions etc. But these would be moderated places where you do need to bring proof and sound arguments, not emotionally charged headlines.
The stories and information posted on social media are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted as fact.
Simply leaves social media, or believe nothing on it.
Academic books by experrs, peer-reviewed papers etc. are better.
Wikipedia and podcast/interviews with real experts (not pundits, I mean experts) are good too.
I’m only on Lemmy, but I don’t think my individual decision will make a difference—and unfortunately, I don’t think anyone should realistically expect it to.
I think anyone who is already here has recognized the problem.
You can’t change the whole world but if you choose to point out misinformation among your real life group or in smaller communities, you can still make a difference.
