Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… because we‘re unable to read our medications instructions or the terms of the products we use.
I‘m not against education. But i would like to hold people who make claims accountable additionally to enabling the public to do research.
Well, that works if the only vector of misinformation is broadcast-based, but it’s not. There are far fewer gatekeepers now than there were last century, you don’t just have to fact check what comes up the traditional media pipe, also social media claims and claims from marginal sources. Both of which look pretty much identical to traditional media in the forms that most people consume them, which is a big part of the issue.
And, of course, anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place, it’s not as trivial as that.
In any case, there are no silver bullets here. This is the world we live in. We’re in mitigation mode now.
I’m saying that holding a news outlet accountable for accuracy could work in a news landscape where people get their information from a handful of outlets that all reach a broad audience. In a world where a lot of people get small pieces of misinformation from thousands or millions of tiny sources spread across social media it is much harder to keep a centralized control on accuracy for all those communications, even discounting all the issues with free speech and opinion.
I’m saying that holding a news outlet accountable for accuracy could work in a news landscape where people get their information from a handful of outlets that all reach a broad audience. In a world where a lot of people get small pieces of misinformation from thousands or millions of tiny sources spread across social media it is much harder to keep a centralized control on accuracy for all those communications
Hm, I do agree that many outlets/sources may make things “messier”, but I don’t think that it would mean that the laws could no longer apply — for example, I think, defamation laws could still apply to anyone.
As I think someone else already pointed out, defamation is not a major part of the issue and it’s already in place quite strictly in many places without making a dent on the issue.
And yes, it’s absolutely defeated by scale. You can’t start a legal process against every single tweet and facebook post (let alone every message in a Whatsapp group you can’t even see in the first place). As with paywalls, the aggregate effect ends up being that large outlets are held to a high standard while misinformation spread through social media is not just cheaper to make but less accountable.
[…] You can’t start a legal process against every single tweet and facebook post (let alone every message in a Whatsapp group you can’t even see in the first place). […]
Imo, theoretically one could, but I think that it would be impractical, or at least prohibitively expensive.
The eu is doing a somewhat decent job pushing for platform liability although I would say we need more and harder measures in that case.
Of course all your points apply too so the skill of fact checking needs to be honed. But keeping potential drivers of misinformation accountable is paramount.
Sure, it’s a hard line to walk against free speech, though.
I am more concerned about access. Reliable, high quality information is increasingly paywalled, while disinformation is very much not. That is a big problem and, again, one with no easy solutions. If people with the skillset and the disposition need to charge to keep their jobs while meme farmss keep pumping out bad faith narratives funded by hostile actors it’s going to be hard to reverse course.
I alsmost wonder if accuntability takes the shape of public funding for information access on outlets meeting certain oversight standards, but that is a very hard sell in a political landscape where some political groups benefit from the current situation.
Free speech or freeze peach as I call the populist american approach is no right. It is just a way for people to manipulate the lesser privileged.
The european way of free speech is you are allowed to say whatever you want as long as you harm noone with it. Knowingly spreading lies is the latter. If thats anti free speech to you, then tough luck.
Europe’s approach to free speech (in general, there are tons of countries with different takes) is that it’s a right along with a bunch of others and it gets limitations like all others. I agree, the US view of rights as places where you do whatever you want and everybody else has to deal with the fallout is fundamentally different to the social democracy approach.
But free speech remains a fundamental right for democracy. If you allow governments to have too much control over resources, private speech or news reporting you end up on the other end of the spectrum, where public resources are spent reinforcing the position of whatever the current government is.
This is and has always been one of the hardest balancing acts of healthy democracies, and it’s borderline impossible in a world dominated by for-profit social media and hostile actors deliberately using communication as a weapon.
[…] anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place […]
I agree. Though, anecdotally, I’m not exactly fond of how some news outlets that I’ve come across use such types of sources — they use some adulterated quote snipped buried within their article; I think it would be better if they, for example, post explicitly the entire unadulterated (within good reason) transcript of the anonymous source with all relevant metadata cited along with it, and then cite that in whatever article.
Yeah, it’s a problematic tool, for sure. In politics in particular it can be used to present interested or partisan information as factual or to manufacture a story. Happens all the time.
That’s why loopholes are loopholes and controlling misinformation is so hard. Perfectly legitimate tools can be used maliciously or unethically and there are very valuable babies in that bathwater that shouldn’t be sacrificed in pursuit of easy solutions.
With respect, this shows an ignorance of the historical role of journalism in democracy.
to cite sources
Sources may have valuable information to get out, but not be willing to go on the record. Professional journalists are like doctors in that they’ve committed themselves to a code of ethics. As citizens we are called on to trust them to not make sh*t up.
For publicly available written sources, it’s only a bit different. Yes, they could cite every sentence they write, and indeed some do, but it still comes down to institutional trust. If you don’t trust where you’re getting your news from, this is a problem that’s probably not gonna get fixed with citations.
make them liable if it turns out to be false
A terrible no-good idea. Legislating for truth is a slippery slope that ends in authoritarian dystopia. The kind of law you are advocating exists in a ton of countries (“spreading dangerous falsehoods”, abuse of defamation laws when the subject involves an individual, etc). You would not want to live in any of these places.
Yes, it is. It’s literally how a complex society works. Do you advocate trusting nobody about anything and somehow doing all the research yourself? Would you dismiss your doctor for their “appeal to authority” when they open a medical textbook? This is silly.
[…] Would you dismiss your doctor for their “appeal to authority” when they open a medical textbook? […]
Trusting the doctor’s word simply because they are a doctor would be an appeal to authority; whereas, referencing a medical textbook would be citing a source, and therefore not conjecture.
[…] Do you advocate trusting nobody about anything and somehow doing all the research yourself? […]
It’s more that I think reputation increases the probability that a claim is accurate, but it isn’t proof of accuracy. That being said, even if an entity is trustworthy, I think they still have a responsibility to maintain that trust by being transparent in the claims that they make — I think they shouldn’t ride on the coattails of current public opinion.
A terrible no-good idea. Legislating for truth is a slippery slope that ends in authoritarian dystopia. The kind of law you are advocating exists in a ton of countries (“spreading dangerous falsehoods”, abuse of defamation laws when the subject involves an individual, etc). You would not want to live in any of these places.
Do you agree with the existence of defamation laws?
Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… […]
Well, defamation laws do exist [1]. Other than things like that, I think one should be very careful with such times of laws as, imo, they begin encroaching rather rapidly on freedom of speech.
Defamation is very far away from our current situation. Europe is on the correct path imo in holding those who profit from disinformation accountable.
There should be no right to abuse others verbally or spread disinformation. Of course you can always use this in bad faith as a government but that is what we have assasins for.
Defamation is very far away from our current situation. […]
How so? Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by “make them liable if it turns out to be false” — I think it’s possible that defamation wouldn’t account for all possibilities, but I think it’s at least one thing that is covered by what you are talking about.
People and companies have abused the judicial system as long as it has been in place. We havent (and shouldnt) dismantle it just because it can be abused.
That is correct. It neither needs to be nor is a society that allows abuse of power „civil“.
This new development showed that the ever going „we win, you lose, and you‘ll be happy about it“ does in fact have an antidote, although a horrific and regrettable one.
If we begin divulging our sources to the companies and governments we report on, we can no longer credibly offer vulnerable sources protection and those sources would understandably not trust us and would not be willing to talk to us.
I agree. Especially 404 media is known to me. But you‘re taking my idea literally. Of course there are situations where this isnt feasible but in the vast majority, the need for backing up a claim outweighs the need for confidentiality.
For example „migrants have again attacked innocent native“ is a popular leading headline which has no real news value but drives opinions and disinformation.
A newspaper could be required to back up such a claim with sources proving that on average, migrants will unprovokedly attack native born people who are on average innocent (which all is bullshit, therefore this headline would become illegal).
Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… because we‘re unable to read our medications instructions or the terms of the products we use.
I‘m not against education. But i would like to hold people who make claims accountable additionally to enabling the public to do research.
Well, that works if the only vector of misinformation is broadcast-based, but it’s not. There are far fewer gatekeepers now than there were last century, you don’t just have to fact check what comes up the traditional media pipe, also social media claims and claims from marginal sources. Both of which look pretty much identical to traditional media in the forms that most people consume them, which is a big part of the issue.
And, of course, anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place, it’s not as trivial as that.
In any case, there are no silver bullets here. This is the world we live in. We’re in mitigation mode now.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
I’m saying that holding a news outlet accountable for accuracy could work in a news landscape where people get their information from a handful of outlets that all reach a broad audience. In a world where a lot of people get small pieces of misinformation from thousands or millions of tiny sources spread across social media it is much harder to keep a centralized control on accuracy for all those communications, even discounting all the issues with free speech and opinion.
Hm, I do agree that many outlets/sources may make things “messier”, but I don’t think that it would mean that the laws could no longer apply — for example, I think, defamation laws could still apply to anyone.
As I think someone else already pointed out, defamation is not a major part of the issue and it’s already in place quite strictly in many places without making a dent on the issue.
And yes, it’s absolutely defeated by scale. You can’t start a legal process against every single tweet and facebook post (let alone every message in a Whatsapp group you can’t even see in the first place). As with paywalls, the aggregate effect ends up being that large outlets are held to a high standard while misinformation spread through social media is not just cheaper to make but less accountable.
“the issue” being misinformation and disinformation that’s not defamation?
Sure. Defamation is a very specific case of improper communication.
But even defamation is hard to control in a world of distributed social media communication.
Imo, theoretically one could, but I think that it would be impractical, or at least prohibitively expensive.
Same thing. You’ll run out of court bandwidth even before you run out of money, and you will definitely run out of money.
And you literally can’t in many cases when you’re dealing with messages being sent internationally.
Of course not. My point stands though.
The eu is doing a somewhat decent job pushing for platform liability although I would say we need more and harder measures in that case.
Of course all your points apply too so the skill of fact checking needs to be honed. But keeping potential drivers of misinformation accountable is paramount.
Sure, it’s a hard line to walk against free speech, though.
I am more concerned about access. Reliable, high quality information is increasingly paywalled, while disinformation is very much not. That is a big problem and, again, one with no easy solutions. If people with the skillset and the disposition need to charge to keep their jobs while meme farmss keep pumping out bad faith narratives funded by hostile actors it’s going to be hard to reverse course.
I alsmost wonder if accuntability takes the shape of public funding for information access on outlets meeting certain oversight standards, but that is a very hard sell in a political landscape where some political groups benefit from the current situation.
Yes indeed.
Free speech or freeze peach as I call the populist american approach is no right. It is just a way for people to manipulate the lesser privileged.
The european way of free speech is you are allowed to say whatever you want as long as you harm noone with it. Knowingly spreading lies is the latter. If thats anti free speech to you, then tough luck.
Europe’s approach to free speech (in general, there are tons of countries with different takes) is that it’s a right along with a bunch of others and it gets limitations like all others. I agree, the US view of rights as places where you do whatever you want and everybody else has to deal with the fallout is fundamentally different to the social democracy approach.
But free speech remains a fundamental right for democracy. If you allow governments to have too much control over resources, private speech or news reporting you end up on the other end of the spectrum, where public resources are spent reinforcing the position of whatever the current government is.
This is and has always been one of the hardest balancing acts of healthy democracies, and it’s borderline impossible in a world dominated by for-profit social media and hostile actors deliberately using communication as a weapon.
We have gone far into the fight on principles here.
Yes, free speech
No spreading lies, period.
I agree. Though, anecdotally, I’m not exactly fond of how some news outlets that I’ve come across use such types of sources — they use some adulterated quote snipped buried within their article; I think it would be better if they, for example, post explicitly the entire unadulterated (within good reason) transcript of the anonymous source with all relevant metadata cited along with it, and then cite that in whatever article.
Yeah, it’s a problematic tool, for sure. In politics in particular it can be used to present interested or partisan information as factual or to manufacture a story. Happens all the time.
That’s why loopholes are loopholes and controlling misinformation is so hard. Perfectly legitimate tools can be used maliciously or unethically and there are very valuable babies in that bathwater that shouldn’t be sacrificed in pursuit of easy solutions.
With respect, this shows an ignorance of the historical role of journalism in democracy.
Sources may have valuable information to get out, but not be willing to go on the record. Professional journalists are like doctors in that they’ve committed themselves to a code of ethics. As citizens we are called on to trust them to not make sh*t up.
For publicly available written sources, it’s only a bit different. Yes, they could cite every sentence they write, and indeed some do, but it still comes down to institutional trust. If you don’t trust where you’re getting your news from, this is a problem that’s probably not gonna get fixed with citations.
A terrible no-good idea. Legislating for truth is a slippery slope that ends in authoritarian dystopia. The kind of law you are advocating exists in a ton of countries (“spreading dangerous falsehoods”, abuse of defamation laws when the subject involves an individual, etc). You would not want to live in any of these places.
Imo, that’s an appeal to authority.
Yes, it is. It’s literally how a complex society works. Do you advocate trusting nobody about anything and somehow doing all the research yourself? Would you dismiss your doctor for their “appeal to authority” when they open a medical textbook? This is silly.
Trusting the doctor’s word simply because they are a doctor would be an appeal to authority; whereas, referencing a medical textbook would be citing a source, and therefore not conjecture.
It’s more that I think reputation increases the probability that a claim is accurate, but it isn’t proof of accuracy. That being said, even if an entity is trustworthy, I think they still have a responsibility to maintain that trust by being transparent in the claims that they make — I think they shouldn’t ride on the coattails of current public opinion.
Why not?
Do you agree with the existence of defamation laws?
Of course. Hence the word “abuse”.
In your opinion, what exactly would qualify as abuse of defamation laws? Could you provide an example for clarity?
Doctors can actually face real consequences if they break their code of ethics, “journalists” get promoted for it
You’re doing exactly what you criticize others for doing.
How so?
Well, defamation laws do exist [1]. Other than things like that, I think one should be very careful with such times of laws as, imo, they begin encroaching rather rapidly on freedom of speech.
References
Defamation is very far away from our current situation. Europe is on the correct path imo in holding those who profit from disinformation accountable.
There should be no right to abuse others verbally or spread disinformation. Of course you can always use this in bad faith as a government but that is what we have assasins for.
I’m unfamiliar with those specific laws. Could you cite what your referring to for my reference?
No problem: the digital services act and the digital markets act. The best write up I could find ad hoc is this
How so? Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by “make them liable if it turns out to be false” — I think it’s possible that defamation wouldn’t account for all possibilities, but I think it’s at least one thing that is covered by what you are talking about.
For clarity, are you referring to the government abusing the judicial system to silence someone with opinions they don’t like?
Among other potential abuses, yes.
People and companies have abused the judicial system as long as it has been in place. We havent (and shouldnt) dismantle it just because it can be abused.
Imo, this isn’t sustainable in a stable, and civil society.
That is correct. It neither needs to be nor is a society that allows abuse of power „civil“.
This new development showed that the ever going „we win, you lose, and you‘ll be happy about it“ does in fact have an antidote, although a horrific and regrettable one.
Problematic.
https://www.404media.co/404-media-objects-to-texas-attorney-general-ken-paxtons-subpoena-to-access-our-reporting/
I agree. Especially 404 media is known to me. But you‘re taking my idea literally. Of course there are situations where this isnt feasible but in the vast majority, the need for backing up a claim outweighs the need for confidentiality.
For example „migrants have again attacked innocent native“ is a popular leading headline which has no real news value but drives opinions and disinformation.
A newspaper could be required to back up such a claim with sources proving that on average, migrants will unprovokedly attack native born people who are on average innocent (which all is bullshit, therefore this headline would become illegal).