to think MN could do with community notes on some posts?

[cakeorwine]

When someone starts a thread that is based on false information, misinformation or where context is needed otherwise a false impression would be given.

I mean I am sure no one ever starts a thread using misinformation or where context is missing, but if they were to do that, then a note added to the first post with context - as you get on Twitter.

There would be posts afterwards which might lead people to the same view - but to save people the effort of having to read all the posts to see if the OP was misleading others, then a community note could work.

What's the difference between misinformation and false information?

Knowing your lying and spreading something that is not true but you don't know it's not true.

One is spread accidentally by the right wing and the other is spread purposely by the right wing.

Surely people know to look for sources for things claimed on anonymous forums?

I know it's frustrating when hares are set running by poorly written OPs, but MN staff can sometimes edit the OP to clear up ambiguities or mistakes. I'd stick with that rather than leaving it to the other posters.

If OPs clarify in later posts then people should be reading all OP's posts anyway.

And deliberately misleading OPs should be removed.

Do you think people do?
Or do you think many people like to read and agree with things that already confirms their view?

I've fallen for fake news in the past. It was something that a politician could so easily have said. I did repost it - but then realised it was fake news .So deleted the post.

Easily done

Okay. So Person A deliberately and knowingly puts out a story that’s not true. That’s false information.

Person B believes it and passes it on. That’s misinformation.

What difference does it make to Person C if they get it from Person A or Person B?

Or people could not believe everything they read from randomers?

At what point do you take responsibility for what you believe?

I am so sick and tired of people who want to hand over responsibility for every aspect of their lives to someone else so they don't have to do the thinking.

Also, how do we know whether these notes are true or not? Who polices that? Community Notes on Community Notes? What's the difference between that and people just posting disagreement or clarification?

And how can we be sure that the community is more correct than the original poster? If I post on, say, the FlatEarthSociety Page, saying that the world is a globe, the whole community will pile in to say that's false information. How does that help the quest for truth and clarity?

In other words, how will this whole thing work?

It's just not going to work on MN, I don't think.

The genius of Community Notes is that they are crowdsourced, and only appear if a large number of people who usually disagree on things agree they are useful.

That relies on their being a huge number of very diverse (in views) readers. I don't think MN has the volume for that.

And having MNHQ decide the 'true' position on posts, would be a disaster I think. It would risk killing off MN's vibe as a pluralistic space for a wide range of views. Not necessarily because MN would use false facts, but because the selection of which types of post need correcting or contextualising is inherently subjective and political.

Because sometimes B is seen as more trustworthy. So C would not have believed A, but does believes B. The commonly given example is where B is a celebrity, doesn’t fact check, passes on the information unwittingly and then a number of their followers believe them, in a way they wouldn’t believe a more random person.

Or the left wing. Or anyone with a specific agenda.

So the same bad information can be both false information (when it comes from A) and misinformation (when it comes from B).

The most likely scenario is that C knows neither of them, and certainly has no way of telling false information from misinformation. The content's the same either way, so I don't see what difference it makes.

If the idea is to stop bad information being spread around, I don't see that it matters whether the receiver knows whether the sender knows or not.

That's an interesting question.

What makes someone believe something and how do they know it's true?
Do they even care if it's true as long as it agrees with something they already believe.

People are prone to believing what confirms their own viewpoint. It takes effort to see if it's true and people just don't like making that effort.