5000 upvotes, hundreds of comments, easy to verify, 100% wrong(kolemcrae.com)

5 pointsby canadianwriter8 anni fa3 comments

5000 upvotes, hundreds of comments, easy to verify, 100% wrong

https://kolemcrae.com/upvotes-comments-wrong/

3 comments

tjwds8 anni fa

I think framing this as a technology problem, as quite a few folks tend to do, is the wrong approach. There are plenty of nuggets of memetic knowledge that are simply false, but still passed around by word of mouth (or, in some extreme cases, by more systemic methods).

I hope a non-controversial example of this is the idea that vaccines cause autism: patently false, spread through a million different mediums, easy to disprove (if you look in the right places, as recommended in the article), yet still a pervasive thought.

> This is a serious problem that we need to face online - a culture of fact checking needs to be pushed, even for small things like this.

It needs to happen everywhere, and it's not going to be a technological answer.

canadianwriter8 anni fa

You're right - this isn't just an online problem though it is likely the Internet speeds it up by a massive amount. A small false fact would be shared in the past and with time become a meme (in the traditional sense) but online it can happen in seconds.

Zeta_Function8 anni fa

The problem from the perspective of Brandolini’s Law, is that whatever factor the internet applies to the spread information enjoys a 10:1 ratio advantage in favor of bullshit.