This included at least 15 years of harsh occupation, as the Philippine Katipunan (in the north) and Moros (the Muslims of the south) fought a guerilla war against their US occupiers, with roughly 200,000 dead from famines and war. I mean, USA occupied the Philippines until the 1940s (the seeds for Philippine independence were planted by the 20s, but WW2 severely delayed plans). But just because US Citizens have forgotten the story doesn't mean that this stuff didn't happen.
The Yellow Press has been a bane upon US society for over a century. There's letters from Ben Franklin about how he manipulated the press (ie: leaking false "scalping" stories about native Americans / British) to aid in the US Revolution. (See Henry Hamilton, a British Administrator who was widely believed to be a scalper, but proof never was offered on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hamilton_(colonial_admin...)
-------
This is literally who we are as a people. Easily manipulated, outraged filled citizens who individually seem to have difficulty doing any form of critical thinking. Then a few elites get a good idea about how to manipulate the masses: be they Benjamin Franklin, William Hearst, his rival Pulitzer, or today Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey.
Its been like this for centuries, and it will continue to be like this long after you or I die.
Both Pulitzer and Ben Franklin are national heroes for their ability to levy the masses and gain popular support.
Problem #1 is explaining to people that the outrage-filled Yellow press is a problem in the first place. Too many people yell "free speech" and "freedom", and point out these heroes of the past.
People don't even think this is a problem. So it won't get solved. If you can convince enough people that maybe we should do something about this, feel free to do so.
One thing that is happening is that social media is escalating the problem so much that its becoming visible to everyone, which in turn will increase the demand to do something about information quality (including defining what it is or is not). This seems to be already in progress.
Another thing I'm hoping for is that we can get NLU that is advanced enough to detect and elevate great quality material (both from research but also from educational perspective) that can successfully counteract "yellow journalism" and misinformation. We could combine this with NLU that can detect common techniques that take advantage of flaws in our reasoning abilities.
I'm actually optimistic this may be possible now. I also suspect it won't be necessary to go against free speach to achieve this.
> I also suspect it won't be necessary to go against free speach to achieve this.
We only need to look at the misinformation from 10 years ago to see how quickly "free speech" comes into play as a counter-argument.
"Obama is a Muslim" and "Obama was born in Kenya" are two pieces of misinformation. Explain what methodologies you'd do to stop these pieces of misinformation from spreading on Facebook, Twitter... or hell... Fox News / traditional media.
Any such restriction you think up with will immediately bring out the free-speech advocates. People want the "freedom" to spread these lies around for political gain.
--------
Its easier to use 10-year-old conspiracies because they're no longer "hot". I'm sure there are still people who believe in this misinformation today, but they're more riled up about current misinformation rather than past misinformation.
> Explain what methodologies you'd do to stop these pieces of misinformation from spreading on Facebook, Twitter... or hell... Fox News / traditional media.
Explaining that these sources of information are not reliable, because they use techniques to manipulate public opinion. We have to discredit entire subsets of media that aren't willing to give up manipulative practices.
Saying that we can and should demand higher quality for our information, just as we demand high quality for other products. We make all kinds of (life) decision based on information.
Offering an alternative, better source of information, which is transparent, has a well defined methodology, can "show you the work" if you want to see it. One where you will know people put a lot of effort into producing high quality material and went to great length to avoid common pitfalls of human reasoning. A new kind of media to improve the quality of our lives by improving the quality of our information.
Free speach is totally fine to continue existing. Traditional media can also continue to exist. That doesn't mean we have to take it seriously - nobody bans tabloids either, but we don't put much into them.
> Explaining that these sources of information are not reliable, because they use techniques to manipulate public opinion. We have to discredit entire subsets of media that aren't willing to give up manipulative practices.
Sure. I can believe that's a step in the right process. But have you ever tried to discredit Fox News for pushing the lie that "Obama is a Muslim" ?? Or "Obama was born in Kenya" ??
Even if you point out that a certain news publication does this, no one really seems to care in my experience.
-------
Look, people believe Obama was not born in the USA because they _want_ to believe that their political opponents are cheating at the process. And Fox News simply delivers to them what they want.
Cater to people's worst desires and worst beliefs... you know, those beliefs that no one else is willing to discuss... and you'll become a trustworthy friend of theirs.
Similarly: people want to be optimistic about COVID19. They want to believe in a cure (that isn't that cure that liberals are pushing). So now you have Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Give them the optimism they so desire, and they'll believe you.
People are right to be scared and afraid of COVID19. People are right to search for a cure and have optimism. But its when these media outlets feed on these fears and pushes misinformation that things get dangerous.
The idea isn't to focus on any individual bit of misinformation. Its to throw away the whole thing, conceptually, as a bad way of getting information, as a low quality source of it. It might have to include some left-leaning media as well, or most media in general as we know it today, because unfortunately most media today is manipulative instead of informative.
The hard bit is offering a good alternative, based on a decent set of principles, that will preserve its independence. Some principles might include:
- linking and detailed referencing to existing, primary sources
- grading the quality of information sources based on levels of evidence determined by experts
- showing the work i.e. using modern tech to allow the reader to expand on the whys and details if they want to (wiki style) without necessarily getting bogged down getting the gist of it (if they don't)
- you should be able to get from a lightweight, easy-read, to-the-point news article with a video to a full blown code-available paper that is also a Jupyther notebook with the anonymized dataset included, if you click deep enough
- full transparency to the entire process with public versioning of drafts and detailed commentary / editorialization etc - for those that want to access it. Open source and open data journalism, science and science communication.
(I'll be honest, the above list is super rough WIP at the moment - some of those might turn out to be bad ideas)
The reason why people might care now is that they are actually dying or getting maimed because they were exposed to misinformation. Between special interests pushing their narratives and solo manipulative grifters that are banking on building an audience, its hard to tell who to trust.
With a system like this, I suspect it might actually be possible to remove taboos eventually. Taboos are only taboos because we fear their effects on mass misinformation, misinterpretation and other systemic (un)intended negative effects. If we can find a new way of thinking that gains wide acceptance and is immune to those flaws, then maybe we can open up taboo topics.
> The idea isn't to focus on any individual bit of misinformation. Its to throw away the whole thing, conceptually, as a bad way of getting information, as a low quality source of it. It might have to include some left-leaning media as well, or most media in general as we know it today, because unfortunately most media today is manipulative instead of informative.
No. The important thing is to _GET OTHER PEOPLE_ to do this.
My mom, or my sister's father in law, will not trust what I say if it contradicts their news sources. So there's no feasible way I (or really, anyone else) can get them to throw away their bad news sources.
- don't focus on what their news sources are saying but instead
- you focus on why the old way is bad in general (across both left and right news media).
Thats the new message. Not "your news sources are bad" but "the entire approach of most news media today is bad. here is this new media utilizing a new approach where anyone can do the work and is fully open source so harder to manipulate"
The USA literally started a war on false pretenses and took over the Philippines as a result of Yellow Journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1889)
This included at least 15 years of harsh occupation, as the Philippine Katipunan (in the north) and Moros (the Muslims of the south) fought a guerilla war against their US occupiers, with roughly 200,000 dead from famines and war. I mean, USA occupied the Philippines until the 1940s (the seeds for Philippine independence were planted by the 20s, but WW2 severely delayed plans). But just because US Citizens have forgotten the story doesn't mean that this stuff didn't happen.
The Yellow Press has been a bane upon US society for over a century. There's letters from Ben Franklin about how he manipulated the press (ie: leaking false "scalping" stories about native Americans / British) to aid in the US Revolution. (See Henry Hamilton, a British Administrator who was widely believed to be a scalper, but proof never was offered on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hamilton_(colonial_admin...)
-------
This is literally who we are as a people. Easily manipulated, outraged filled citizens who individually seem to have difficulty doing any form of critical thinking. Then a few elites get a good idea about how to manipulate the masses: be they Benjamin Franklin, William Hearst, his rival Pulitzer, or today Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey.
Its been like this for centuries, and it will continue to be like this long after you or I die.