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I’m going to keep this apolitical and not talk about any side in specific, but how does a government tell the truth when people don’t want to hear it? I want some actual discussion from this ESPECIALLY from those who think the Government correcting anyone on anything is censorship because the logic doesn’t seem to be cohesive.
Let’s say somebody fucked up badly and now you (yes you) are a leader of whatever federal government side you’d like and your side happens to be in power.
Someone posts a blog article on a social media site that says “(YOUR NAME HERE) Is Going To Kill Us All And Does Horrible Things To Animal Butts”. It’s filled with all kinds of scathing insults and made up crap that you didn’t do. It focuses on the fact that you went on a vacation last year for a week. But the blog post says that it wasn’t a vacation, it was a trip to plan how to kill everyone and put things into animal butts. So many things. Gross things. You’ve not done anything they’re talking about, but people DO know that you had a vacation.
It continues to get shared enough that opinion-based media sites start covering it. Not saying it’s true, simply covering the initial post and saying that someone else says it’s true. That way they can’t be sued, y’see. Someone posts a badly photoshopped picture of you with one hand holding a stack of paperwork with the title “Secret Government Plan #127 - How to Murder Everyone I don’t Like and Continue Molesting Animals.” It’s badly edited, but dumb people continue to share it because they don’t like you and some people are calling it real.
You release an official statement stating your innocence, but the people who are on the opposite political side from you are saying you’re lying. They want to have you stand trial. You’ve done nothing, but some are already saying you’re using your power to NOT have to stand trial otherwise the police would have stopped you. Some are saying the police are in on it! So… how do you solve this?
How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?
And I mean something long term, true, and without pissing off half the population because you’re “telling them how to think” (even if “how they think” is just made up bullshit designed to piss them off and emotionally manipulate them).
How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?
In short, how, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is without outright censorship?
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The best way to combat misinformation is for critical thinking to be a core part of the education system. Otherwise there’s always a danger that those “monitoring” misinformation themselves begin following based on ulterior motives.
I do agree with this, BUT you know absolutely that the kids coming home and correcting their parents would be called “brainwashed” and there would be a massive outcry.
It HAS to be part of the solution though.
Yeah, very true. You need to teach them how to be diplomatic about disagreements (or to know when to keep their mouths shut because some people can’t handle it). A decent number of people can do one or the other but few both. (I had to learn the merits of diplomacy the hard way and it took a while).
what are you asking exactly?
Are you asking the general question (“how does a government tell the truth when people don’t want to hear it?”) or are you asking the specific question (e.g. how to respond to “Secret Government Plan #127 - How to Murder Everyone I don’t Like and Continue Molesting Animals”)?
the former seems like it would be a intresting discussion, since governments are already doing that. The latter seems to very US-centric.
Good clarification! I’ve now added it to the end of the post.
How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?
Given this, I think it’s the general question, and I wonder likewise. Although if it’s hyper-specifically targeted, as sort of in their example, wouldn’t that be where libel/slander laws should come into play?
Beyond that, perhaps adjustments to education to improve literacy and media literacy may help? However, even then, maybe logic classes where there aren’t any might be better suited to address this, as literacy alone doesn’t necessarily keep one from being fooled. At least where I’m from, logic wasn’t a subject on its own, instead only appearing indirectly in some maths and science classes.
The problem is like dealing with dandelions … Deal with the issue at the root and ignore the pretty little flowers and leaves that come out of the ground. You can keep mowing down the flowers and leaves but if you never deal with the root, you’ll forever be living with dandelions growing from every crack in the concrete, edge of your lawn and through the gaps in your walkway. They will never stop unless you deal with the roots.
The root of the problem with disinformation in the world right now is corporately controlled media. All information is managed, controlled, filtered, manipulated and maintained by a handful of powerful corporate entities that enjoy directing people’s rage against government opponents and encouraging those government political parties that would best serve their corporate interests.
A way to deal with it is to regulate and manage every major social media company in the same way as newspapers, cable tv, magazines, television and film production … everything they do on their platform has to be regulated by a complex system of government and public oversight in order for it to be made available and used by the citizens of the country.
This does not mean regulate the internet for individual citizens or even private individuals from other countries. Any one person on their own can say whatever they please on their own and publish on the internet. However, as soon as its made available on a major social media platform, it becomes the responsibilities and liability of the corporation that owns the media platform. The social media company would be responsible for making sure that any content that is published is set to the same standards and regulations as a newspaper, a public billboard, a magazine advertisement, a public banner, a television advertisement. If the content that is published on the social media company, no matter who made it available, it would be the responsibility of the social media company and if failed to meet any regulation, the company would be fined and penalized for it on every instance. The company would be forced to regulate everything that is published on their platform forcing them to regulate the content instead of the government.
This is the same situation that happened to society at the turn of the last century in 1900 when newspapers became the only source of critical information in the world … governments everywhere had to regulate these publications because they all knew that if these big companies were let loose, they would manipulate the world to their own ends. The same thing is happening now … instead of newspapers we call it Social Media now … and all our public information, discourse and information sharing the majority of the world shares now is on social media. Like it or not, most people get their news on social media and little to none of it is regulated. It’s an information, disinformation, misinformation free for all … which is why we are all suffering from all this political insanity.
It doesn’t matter what the issue is … racism, sexism, politics, religion, identity, whatever … so long as we leave the keys to the information highway to private corporations, we will always have these problems of communications, hatred, anger, anxiety and fear everywhere on every issue.
Regulate and control Social Media Corporations and remove their power over public information.
Otherwise, we will continue to dive into the abyss of misinformation.
I absolutely love your take on this. I think this would be heavily pushed back against by the “I do my own research” crowd. They will insist that the truth is only the government’s version of the truth.
This was my stumbling block. How do we get across that there is only one truth and that opinion starts once the truth is discovered?
Imo any attempts to control things are only going to lead to more, not less bad messaging. To me, as mentioned elsewhere, the key is to improve the judgement of the observer, not the information itself.
And how would you do that given that the people that need the information are the least likely to accept the training?
Invest in the future, not the past. For every moment of effort you spend on headstrong adults you could be having 10x the effect with youth outreach.
So in effect, write off adults, focus on kids.
I wouldn’t quite go that far, but I would focus more of my efforts where more results are to be had. There are still some genuinely open-minded/genuinely confused adults out there, so you can’t give up on them entirely and you should still make some efforts, but a lot of what people spend a lot of time doing is basically throwing grass in the wind.
Maybe if we point out that sitting on the toilet and reading <W> wing hack rags isn’t research, it’s just taking in and expelling shit in a single motion, that would solve the “do my own research” problem?
…
Nah, didn’t think so.
I like the “lying-by-omission” approach, that is used widely in practice. I tell only the truth, but carefully select which truths to tell.
Concrete example: When there is a war going on, where I strongly favor on side, I will either not talk about it at all (e.g. what the EU did with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict). Or I will select stories that fit my narrative. I.e. a dead soldier on our side is a tragedy, which will be followed up by personal stories about his live, his family, etc. But a dead soldier on their side will be portrait as a great victory, and which will be followed up by documentary on our superior training and weapons-technologie.
I think this point grazes by a very common discussion you get where some people will insist that anything that isn’t outright lying is okay while others will say that anything that is broadly deceptive or misleading is impossible. (Maybe some people at the extremes who say you should tell the whole truth at all times).
This is just my personal approach but in an environment that’s gossipy, I tend to refuse to answer all questions because I don’t like lying, but if you selectively refuse to answer something like “Do you like x person,” or “Do you know something about y situation?” but normally answer no, then yes is obvious. But if you consistently refuse to answer any kinds of these leading questions you can both avoid lying and giving away information you don’t want to. (Imo few people realize that in addition to truth and lie there is refusal/silence).
This isn’t really combating mis- or disinformation at all, this is propagandizing. I’d argue that this isn’t a good thing at all.
I’d argue that this isn’t a good thing at all.
No it’s not. Except if your question is:
but how does a government tell the truth when people don’t want to hear it?
The answer is: they don’t. Why should they?
Because otherwise it doesn’t answer the question asked and has nothing to do with this thread:
If you are in the position outlined in the prompt and correcting misinformation is required, what are you to do? Lying by omission is… well, it’s not a solution.
