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The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

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Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#71

Post by tpmx »

scrollaway wrote: post #59
ineedasername wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you approach them, what did you ask to help with? Not saying you did this, but there's a big difference between "hey folks, how can I help?" compared to "I noticed your page load times are ridiculous, I can get you to a place that isn't awful".

FWIW this is a fairly common experience. Jason Scott is quite famously a problematic guy. "But", he volunteers an insane amount so he gets a pass on a lot of his antics (hands up if you've heard that story before). Getting kicked out of the IRC channel for pissing him off for basically anything is frequent. I used to hang out on IRC and saw it happen a lot. Eventually happened to me as well (couple years ago). I didn…

That resonates a lot with my experience :/.

Now he's employed by the IA, so not volunteering, right?

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#72

Post by dddddaviddddd »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39
ineedasername wrote: post #34

I like that the internet archive exists, but I don't like how they implement their opt-out policy. Sites can opt-out at any time, which I suppose is the correct thing to allow, but once they opt out then everything the Archive has gathered up to that point also goes away, which seems wrong.

It doesn’t go away, it’s just not public. This is to comply with copyright law. It’s still safely stored on disk.

Ready for public release in roughly 100 years then.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#73

Post by TomMckenny »

taborj wrote: post #5

They mention archiving a bunch of Trump stuff, but are they just focusing on conservatives? There's a bunch of misinformation on both sides, and if they're really after the truth, they should be paying the same amount of time and attention to both right and left. Somewhat related: it's sad but perhaps not inevitable that everyone basically has to do their own research to find out what's actually going on. These days,…

> These days, I don't trust...

The goal of the new style autocrats and their advocates is not a particular propaganda line but to create doubt in reality based information sources. Individuals can follow rabbit holes until the find the story that matches their previously held world view and so guarantee supporters never defect.

For example, you can always find an obscure website "proving" climate change is a hoax. If you now distrust reputable sources and weight every site roughly equally, you could easily convince yourself that no one knows if there is climate change or not.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#74

Post by minikites »

mcantelon wrote: post #47
minikites wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means I oftentimes find myself looking at the raw numbers of, say, gun deaths or immigration numbers, etc. Data is meaningless without context and context is inevitably political and subject to bias.

Good rhetoric to have on speed dial when encountering data that contradicts one's beliefs.

Okay, explain to me how data in isolation communicates meaning.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#75

Post by makomk »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #20
taborj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mention this because of these choice quotes from the linked story: "“We’re bringing up a generation that turns to their screens, without a library of information accessible via screens,” said Mr Kahle. Some have taken advantage of this “new information system”, he argued — and the result is “Trump and Brexit”." ... "After President Trump’s election, and as the existence of disinformation campaigns that sought to sw…

One of the defining aspects of both the Brexit campaign and Trumpism is blatant disregard for facts and the delibirate spread of misinformation that is heavy on one side, and an order or two of magnitude less on the other side. That just is the way of it, however sad that is. It is not the first time that states use misinformation as effective attacks on other states, but that doesn’t mean it should be left unchallen…

It's more, from what I've seen, that one of the definining aspects of the war on misinformation is that it's a tactic against both Trump and Brexit - and that caring about the other side's disregard for facts is therefore spun as helping the spread of misinformation. For instance, the Washington Post quite rightly dinged Bernie Sanders recently for misrepresenting stats to make it look like his flagship policy on healthcare would save hundreds of thousands of Americans from bankrupcy. Sanders doubled down on his original claim and attacked the fact check. Parts of the press sided with him, claiming that the fact checkers were the one attacking facts by making such a big deal about this: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/11/democrats-fact-che... One even accused them of harming democracy itself: https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2019/09/18/fact-checkin...

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#76

Post by [deleted] »

jMyles wrote: post #69
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t go away, it’s just not public. This is to comply with copyright law. It’s still safely stored on disk.

> This is to comply with copyright law. If that's true, it will be a better resource for humanity if it charts a way to be hosted in a jurisdiction where copyright law doesn't require this kind of censorship.

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#77

Post by ent101 »

ineedasername wrote: post #34

I like that the internet archive exists, but I don't like how they implement their opt-out policy. Sites can opt-out at any time, which I suppose is the correct thing to allow, but once they opt out then everything the Archive has gathered up to that point also goes away, which seems wrong.

Just to be clear, the data doesn't seem to be deleted -- it only becomes inaccessible once the site opts out; all the data can come back if the site changes its mind.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#78

Post by mcantelon »

minikites wrote: post #74
mcantelon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good rhetoric to have on speed dial when encountering data that contradicts one's beliefs.

Okay, explain to me how data in isolation communicates meaning.

The word "meaningless" is defined as "lacking any significance". The claim that data lacks any significance until someone extracts meaning from it seems most useful, apart from philosophical discussions, as a rhetorical attempt to make data secondary to interpretation and ergo something that can be waved away by belief systems.

Re: The Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation

#80

Post by afiori »

TomMckenny wrote: post #73
taborj wrote: post #5

They mention archiving a bunch of Trump stuff, but are they just focusing on conservatives? There's a bunch of misinformation on both sides, and if they're really after the truth, they should be paying the same amount of time and attention to both right and left. Somewhat related: it's sad but perhaps not inevitable that everyone basically has to do their own research to find out what's actually going on. These days,…

> These days, I don't trust... The goal of the new style autocrats and their advocates is not a particular propaganda line but to create doubt in reality based information sources. Individuals can follow rabbit holes until the find the story that matches their previously held world view and so guarantee supporters never defect. For example, you can always find an obscure website "proving" climate change is a hoax. If…

> For example, you can always find an obscure website "proving" climate change is a hoax.

But according to the assumption then you check their own sources and their validity. Also while the "climate change is an hoax" is little more than a conspiracy theory in terms of validity, some prediction have been proven false. All together climate change is an undeniable truth, singularly each prediction is far from undeniable on average.

> If you now distrust reputable sources

Considering the frequency of retractions on reputable sources (especially in bombshell articles e.g. the last scoop on Kavanaugh where the NYT forgot to mention that the main witness apparently did not remember the event) you are better off with a weighted average of various source where you try and factor in each source bias.

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