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Oct. 14th, 2021 10:51 pmmuch of the 'online misinformation' discourse ultimately reduces to the fact that if you let people say things, sometimes they will say things that aren't true
like i just saw john oliver's latest bit on misinformation spreading on whatsapp and wechat and such and, yeah, sure. they are messaging apps! they let you talk to people, ergo you can say things that aren't true there
if your aunt isn't sending you covid conspiracy theories on whatsapp then she's just gonna tell you about them over the dinner table. this is not in any meaningful sense whatsapp's responsibility. there is nothing they should do about it.
i don't have a magic solution to make people stop believing bullshit. it's a hard problem. but pointing at the latest thing people use to communicate and blaming it definitely isn't it
(and darkly hinting about how it's end-to-end encrypted and this prevents the company from moderating it is somehow even worse than the previous fearmongering about how encryption means the government can't spy on terrorists)
like i just saw john oliver's latest bit on misinformation spreading on whatsapp and wechat and such and, yeah, sure. they are messaging apps! they let you talk to people, ergo you can say things that aren't true there
if your aunt isn't sending you covid conspiracy theories on whatsapp then she's just gonna tell you about them over the dinner table. this is not in any meaningful sense whatsapp's responsibility. there is nothing they should do about it.
i don't have a magic solution to make people stop believing bullshit. it's a hard problem. but pointing at the latest thing people use to communicate and blaming it definitely isn't it
(and darkly hinting about how it's end-to-end encrypted and this prevents the company from moderating it is somehow even worse than the previous fearmongering about how encryption means the government can't spy on terrorists)
