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Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

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Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#31

Post by [deleted] »

msla wrote: post #19
nabnob wrote: post #10

This is incredibly worrying. I understand that anti-vax conspiracy theories are dangerous, but I can think of a ton of ways banning "bad medical advice", as determined by a $10/hr contractor at Pinterest, Facebook, etc. could end up hurting people with health problems by preventing them from sharing useful information. I have gender dysphoria and at one point considered getting on testosterone, but thanks to conversa…

> I have gender dysphoria and at one point considered getting on testosterone, but thanks to conversations with transmen and detransitioned women on social media, I learned about less-commonly discussed side effects and decided against taking testosterone. This is an area where research is still developing and there aren't a ton of long-term studies, so it's incredibly helpful to be able to learn from other people's…

[deleted]

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#32

Post by pjc50 »

crazygringo wrote: post #29

This is a really, really, really thorny issue. On the one hand, it seems noble/responsible to suppress anti-vax, Russian influence, conspiracy theories, etc. On the other hand, for centuries it's been recognized that the best antidote to "bad speech" isn't censorship, it's more speech . Don't ban, convince. But on the other other hand, that's been exclusively argued in the domain of government action, that government…

Thanks to AI, it's possible to algorithmically generate almost unlimited amounts of false or meaningless speech to drown out accurate information.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#33

Post by crazygringo »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
crazygringo wrote: post #29

This is a really, really, really thorny issue. On the one hand, it seems noble/responsible to suppress anti-vax, Russian influence, conspiracy theories, etc. On the other hand, for centuries it's been recognized that the best antidote to "bad speech" isn't censorship, it's more speech . Don't ban, convince. But on the other other hand, that's been exclusively argued in the domain of government action, that government…

Thanks to AI, it's possible to algorithmically generate almost unlimited amounts of false or meaningless speech to drown out accurate information.

Thanks to AI can't we also do the opposite?

E.g. detect conspiracy theory speech and automatically provide relevant links/warnings to relevant curated sources?

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#34

Post by raphlinus »

This isn't their first rodeo. In 2008 Google launched Knol, which was a fairly major initiative to provide a service like Wikipedia, but without Wikipedia's problems around unattributed content. The idea was that authors would post with their professional affiliation, and get compensated with ad revenue. They hoped to attract actual medical professionals, as medicine was one of the areas where you want to be able to rely on the information.

It failed miserably. The incentives were favorable to spammers but not to actual professionals. No real expert would invest their time into the platform, putting their reputation on the line, for a few paltry ad dollars. But there were some people who mastered cranking out low quality content.

I'm not making any claims about the new effort, just pointing out that identifying a problem and putting resources behind a solution is often not enough.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#35

Post by PavlikPaja »

nisten wrote: post #30
darkerside wrote: post #24

The cure for bad information is usually more information.

In my opinion this hypothesis is totally wrong because the accuracy of information is the problem and not the quantity of it. We can handle quantity, now we need to handle error correction and build better access permissions too.

The problem with censorship is that either the truth is obvious, and there is no need for it, or it isn't, so there is no way to decide fairly what to censor.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#36

Post by bduerst »

maxxxxx wrote: post #12
duxup wrote: post #9

Some firms are more on top of it than others. Netflix's deal with Goop is not encouraging, Goop just a "lifestyle brand" that is selling snake oil.

In the end they will always go for more money despite all the talk about values.

It's not all vapid nonsense - people are now tying branding to their personal identity more (probably as a side effect of social media, but I digress).

If a person feels a consumer-facing company doesn't align with their values then they won't be a customer.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#37

Post by tzs »

crazygringo wrote: post #29

This is a really, really, really thorny issue. On the one hand, it seems noble/responsible to suppress anti-vax, Russian influence, conspiracy theories, etc. On the other hand, for centuries it's been recognized that the best antidote to "bad speech" isn't censorship, it's more speech . Don't ban, convince. But on the other other hand, that's been exclusively argued in the domain of government action, that government…

> On the other hand, for centuries it's been recognized that the best antidote to "bad speech" isn't censorship, it's more speech. Don't ban, convince.

For centuries there were fairly large barriers to widely disseminating your speech, and to lots of people having time or ability to pay attention. I think this may have limited the amount of "bad speech" that the truth had to counter.

It's now a lot easier to disseminate speech, and people have more time and ability to consume speech.

I probably encounter more opinions in a day now on any given topic, from people claiming to have above average or expert knowledge on them, than I did in a month a mere 40 years ago.

This may make what worked centuries ago (or even a few decades ago) ineffective today.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#38

Post by bduerst »

darkerside wrote: post #24

The cure for bad information is usually more information.

What if the bad information is the result of an already too low signal:noise ratio for the good information?

Kind of like this comic: http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/knowledge/

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#39

Post by pixl97 »

darkerside wrote: post #24

The cure for bad information is usually more information.

Eh, there is a problem, human bandwidth. If I spam flood you with crap information you will never have time to input good information. Fake/false/random information is far easier to create than good information, much like in any complex problem space there are only a few correct answers and possibly and infinite number of incorrect ones.

Re: Pinterest Blocks Vaccination Searches in Move to Control the Conversation

#40

Post by pixl97 »

darkerside wrote: post #26
darkerside wrote: post #24

The cure for bad information is usually more information.

Expanding on my own post... why is it any tech company's responsibility to protect people from their own bad decisions?

Are you serious? Because as of so far, in the US, the law demands it. Look at every product you buy "Don't do X dangerous thing with said device". We regulate countless things that can be physically harmful to individuals. I can't go to the store and by dynamite because I can harm myself and others with it.

So should information be regulated if it can cause physical harm to oneself and others. This is not an easy question to answer.

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