People who have turned to X for breaking news about the Israel-Hamas conflict are being hit with old videos, fake photos, and video game footage at a level researchers have never seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6589988

The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation::People who have turned to X for breaking news about the Israel-Hamas conflict are being hit with old videos, fake photos, and video game footage at a level researchers have never seen.

  • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    3·
    1 year ago

    In this case, if a video was first posted online in 2015, and is being shared as part of this conflict now, but with a Hamas logo added to the corner, we can use a search engine to say with absolute certainty that the video is misinformation.

    • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes this seems like a solid case that no one anywhere could argue with. My only point is when the line starts to get fuzzy how do you decide? And is it worth having a total hands off approach at the cost of things like this so that when things get emotional and susceptible to bias that there’s always the full range of information at hand to be able to find the truth? I’m not really for or against btw and I lean towards being at least proactive about this obvious shit

      • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        3·
        1 year ago

        I would prefer not to even get close to the fuzzy line. I think a little bit of misinformation is something society can handle, and we are experiencing a flood of very easily proven wrong misinfo.

        I think the Twitter Added Context feature was a pretty elegant solution, and fit into the “this is wrong, even harmfully so, but I can’t prove its on purpose so maybe deleting it isn’t the right move.”

        These are seriously issues that Lemmy is perfectly positioned to approach solving. Our community is eager to craft the perfect takes. We are so incredibly informed, and debate-ready. And the instances / communities / open source nature means we can literally make our own solutions to the ongoing problems of the net.

        • SuckMyWang@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          I hope you are right. It’s a problem and it needs some solutions. It appears equally as important to get it right and the only way I personally see that happening is by not having a knee jerk reaction to the problem and becoming properly informed and respectfully understanding where the other side is coming from before moving forward too brashly. It’s important to separate this side from trolls who are acting in bad faith. I would put Elon in half believing in it and half acting in bad faith because he is obviously half child. Not always a bad thing, it gives him the ability to be creative and adventurous but we all know sometimes children just want to smash the building down for reasons they don’t even understand.

          The strongest point against censorship is that you don’t know what you don’t know, as in once the switch is flicked we no longer see what is being censored so once it’s out of sight the mechanisms that were put in place have to be air tight from corruption and unintentional bias.