Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

cpj.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 146 posts

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#121

Post by incompatible »

laughinghan wrote: post #118
ilaksh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you have an authority deciding what supposedly is fact and what is not fact.

And who is that problematic authority? The social network defers to the fact-checkers, of whom there are multiple independent ones, and who should be corroborating the government's story not taking it at face value.

A government body doesn't become an "authority" automatically, in the sense of being trusted as an authoritative source. It has to establish such a reputation over time. If it has established such a reputation, I'd be happier to trust its information than something circulated on Facebook from an unknown source.

After all, we generally can't check each observation or theory ourselves first hand. Deciding which sources are trustworthy and which are not is a critical issue.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#122

Post by laughinghan »

chatmasta wrote: post #119
laughinghan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, there's a known, deadly problem of disinformation spreading via WhatsApp forwarding [1], and I'm pretty sure WhatsApp notifications are chronological. But in any case, definitely none of this would be a problem if we got rid of the Internet. What's your point? Algorithmic newsfeeds benefit social media companies enormously (by increasing engagement) and at least some consumers (I'm not denying they also…

I never suggested banning anything. I'm merely asking questions. But sure, to play devil's advocate, is there some precedent here? Maybe with cigarettes for example? Nicotine cigarettes benefit tobacco companies enormously (by increasing addiction). They'll never voluntarily give them up, either. Yet we have approaches for dealing with addictive consumables; taxes, health warnings, education, etc. I wonder if similar…

Thanks for the thoughtful response; upvoted.

I don't think cigarettes are a relevant precedent. It's not like cigarettes cause cancer in some people and make others healthier. (I guess it can make you thinner? But yet it still increases your likelihood of heart disease.)

Algorithmic newsfeeds are a much better experience for many people, who don't want thoughtful discussion and wedding and family photos buried under people announcing to the world that they're pooping.

You also didn't respond to my point that deadly viral WhatsApp forwards refute your contention that "99%" of disinformation problems are due to algorithmic rather than chronological newsfeeds.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#124

Post by emmelaich »

laughinghan wrote: post #86
autarch wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the same person.

Can you explain how you came to that conclusion?

Answered by Autarch, but many people can attest to that.

Audrey was also the principal author of the Pugs (Perl6 implemented in Haskell) effort.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#125

Post by incompatible »

laughinghan wrote: post #118
ilaksh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you have an authority deciding what supposedly is fact and what is not fact.

And who is that problematic authority? The social network defers to the fact-checkers, of whom there are multiple independent ones, and who should be corroborating the government's story not taking it at face value.

Actually, if people are willing to be influenced by disinformation on the Internet, I suspect they are not using an "authority" model of information at all. Perhaps all they care about is whether the "information" is useful to whatever causes they believe in, not its source.

E.g., an anti-vaxxer reading a post on Facebook that agrees that vaccination is harmful, by this concept would be likely to approve the post (like, share) without wasting time with authorities or fact-checking.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#126

Post by papier »

mc32 wrote: post #9

Tang speaks of propaganda and disinformation and how historic propaganda by the government is more or less indistinguishable from disinformation at least by a significant segment of the population. ...But she says that to combat disinformation campaigns the government ministries are in charge of pre-empting disinformation by disseminating their version of information... But that seems like a contradiction. Government…

It's rather disappointing the amount of support the "Ministry of Truth" is getting here.

Also, there are a suspicious amount comments telling us how great a country taiwan is to live in. What does that have to do with this thread? But disinformation is everywhere it seems.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#127

Post by studentrob »

ilaksh wrote: post #46

I don't know if it's the same person, but I believe I may have spoken to Tang about a draft of work she did in the POSA book about EtherCalc. I can understand from just that interaction how she became digital minister. I have never had someone parse and respond to an email so thoroughly or had a better technical discussion in my life. And the work she did on that project scaling EtheCalc with Node and LiveScript, and…

> making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it as she describes is in fact building in a type of censorship

That is not what was described,

> this will inform the Facebook's algorithm so that it will stop being preferred to show on people's newsfeed, but it's not censorship. If you look specifically for that friend, that post is still there, but they have a warning that says it's already fact-checked as false.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#128

Post by blei »

papier wrote: post #126
mc32 wrote: post #9

Tang speaks of propaganda and disinformation and how historic propaganda by the government is more or less indistinguishable from disinformation at least by a significant segment of the population. ...But she says that to combat disinformation campaigns the government ministries are in charge of pre-empting disinformation by disseminating their version of information... But that seems like a contradiction. Government…

It's rather disappointing the amount of support the "Ministry of Truth" is getting here. Also, there are a suspicious amount comments telling us how great a country taiwan is to live in. What does that have to do with this thread? But disinformation is everywhere it seems.

lol, for the few comments that did this, that's most likely just standard internet posting. The "location [X] is in the title, thus I'll make a comment about location [X]" is particularly common. With little relation to the substance or intentions of previous comments.

Though, I admit I'm not sure if this post is being tongue-in-cheek, since it was made by a completely new account. Thus demonstrating in itself another way that online discussions can be influenced.

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#129

Post by rqs »

studentrob wrote: post #127
ilaksh wrote: post #46

I don't know if it's the same person, but I believe I may have spoken to Tang about a draft of work she did in the POSA book about EtherCalc. I can understand from just that interaction how she became digital minister. I have never had someone parse and respond to an email so thoroughly or had a better technical discussion in my life. And the work she did on that project scaling EtheCalc with Node and LiveScript, and…

> making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it as she describes is in fact building in a type of censorship That is not what was described, > this will inform the Facebook's algorithm so that it will stop being preferred to show on people's newsfeed, but it's not censorship. If you look specifically for that friend, that post is still there, but they have a warning that says it's already fact-checke…

This gives me some weird feelings. I mean, if you ask a website to turn some content "unpreferred" without user consensus, isn't that also some type of censorship? In fact, many Chinese websites are doing it right now, and it's very effective in terms of censoring contents.

However, I support the idea of content flagging, but instead of making them "unpreferred", maybe add a mark saying "Propaganda from XXX" so people can be more cautious about those information themselves?

Re: Taiwan's digital minister on combatting disinformation without censorship

#130

Post by studentrob »

rqs wrote: post #129
studentrob wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making it easy to flag propaganda in apps and then blocking it as she describes is in fact building in a type of censorship That is not what was described, > this will inform the Facebook's algorithm so that it will stop being preferred to show on people's newsfeed, but it's not censorship. If you look specifically for that friend, that post is still there, but they have a warning that says it's already fact-checke…

This gives me some weird feelings. I mean, if you ask a website to turn some content "unpreferred" without user consensus, isn't that also some type of censorship? In fact, many Chinese websites are doing it right now, and it's very effective in terms of censoring contents. However, I support the idea of content flagging, but instead of making them "unpreferred", maybe add a mark saying "Propaganda from XXX" so peopl…

It may be that Facebook does not want to show articles in its news feed with the "disinformation" tag attached.

For the government to be more transparent, I suppose you could just publish the articles you marked as disinformation, and let people debate whether they were truly fake or not. Doing nothing, right now, does not seem like an option, in the face of propaganda coming from other countries.

Post reply on HN