Now what is happening? The internet is being polluted with garbage and lies. It hasn’t been good for some time now.
Social media as content aggregation is generally garbage, but it’s a far stretch to apply that to the Internet or even the Web as a whole. Don’t forget Wikipedia is still a thing and almost every creator of primary source data publishes online.
But if anything can be fake now and difficult to identify as fake, then how can you fact check anything? Only those with the means will be able to produce undeniably real news with great difficulty, which I think will return power to major news companies or something equivalent.
That’s kind of always been true. And I agree, we need to find a way to maintain information sourcing organizations (e.g. news) that we can trust as the arbiters of this information. If Washington Post can actually put credible reporters on the ground to confirm something, and I know I can trust WaPo, I can fairly say with some confidence that it’s good information.
I think we all (or some of us at least) just need to be willing to pay for this service.
kromem@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t think you’re wrong, I have been thinking the same thing.
Everyone has been worried about “AI misinformation” - but if misinformation becomes so commoditized online that someone convinced the moon landing is fake finds two dozen different AI generated sources agreeing with them but disagreeing with each other (i.e. a video of Orson Wells filming it but also a video of Stanley Kubrick filming it) we may well end up in a world where people just stop paying attention to the bullshit online that has been destroying people’s minds.
Couple this with the advances in AI correctly identifying misinformation and live fact checking it with citations to reputable sources, combined with things like Elon Musk’s ‘uncensored’ Grok turning around and calling his conservative Twitter fans racist and small minded morons, or Gab’s literal Adolf Hitler AI telling a user they were disgusting for asking if Jews were vermin - and we may just end up on a narrow path out of the mess we’ve found ourselves in well before AI was suddenly a thing.
I had been really worried about the AI misinformation angle, but given some recent developments in the past few months I’m actually hopeful about the future of a better informed public for the first time in years.
Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
Agreed, people are up in arms that misinformation will become easier. But I think the naive idea that the internet is inherently a reliable source of truth mixed with subtler forms of misinformation is much more insidious. Journalism used to be a highly respected field before we all forgot why it was so important.
le_saucisson_masquay@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
People just want to get confirmed in what they already believe, with the amount of fake news people are already getting dumber because they’re not suffering criticism.
If I believe moon landing was fake before I would have hundreds of source telling me I’m wrong and only a few scammy documentaries that would agree with my belief. But now there is fake to confirm any belief I have. Aliens are real, check this video proving it. Zuckerberg is a lizard? There are dozens of photo and video on twitter. And so on.
I’m really not optimistic about that at all.