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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?
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?
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.
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.