Misinformation on DU.

[LAS14]

This discussion thread was locked by EarlG (a host of the General Discussion forum).

Lately we've had to do some work to discover that a post is not based in fact. There's no reason to think that the OP knew that was the case, but it's distracting and time consuming to do the research and the bad information won't be corrected for everyone who reads it, as they won't come back to look at the thread.

It's a new era. We have to put more energy into verifying what we read. Even on DU.

One example was a picture of a bunch of Trump presidency officials where everyone except Nicki Haley had their face blacked out and the claim was that she was the only cabinet member to support Trump.

Another was a video of a Trump rally venue with lots of empty seats. The problem was that it was hours before the rally was to begin.

A third was an tweet ostensibly from Jack Smith.

And a fourth was a thread featuring a borderline salacious video of the 10 dirtiest countries in the world. Down thread someone posted a disclaimer they found on the publisher's YouTube channel.

Disclaimer:
The content presented in our videos is intended solely for entertainment purposes. While we may draw upon facts, rumors, and fiction, viewers should not interpret any part of the content as factual or definitive information.

I would like to propose a new Forum rule that would allow us to alert posts that contain misleading or false information if there's a reasonable expectation that the poster could have figured it out. In other words, don't post stuff from social media without some sort of verification.

To those who ask "What does it matter who said it, if it's worth saying?" I answer that if it matters to any of us, we deserve to know the validity of the source.

I'm not sure how to phrase such a rule. We do want know about misinformation that's out in the wild. It should be sufficient, perhaps, for the poster to state that they hadn't been able to verify it, but it's a challenge we're all going to face in a lot of areas in our lives, so let's work on it here in DU.

[thinkingagain]

1. Back the facts - I like it

It’s one reason I joined the DU
Is because people cited the info of where they got it often fact checked.
That has slowly eroded.

[mucifer]

2. I have often suspected the empty trump rally photos were taken hours before the event. Not surprised. But,

it does suck that people are deceptive.

Sometimes the OP is scammed. We can do our best . But, it's getting a lot harder.

[LexVegas]

3. Rec. nt

[Raven123]

4. I agree with you

[Polly Hennessey]

5. Agree.

[EarlG]

6. I appreciate that you want to weed out misinformation on DU

I think that is a worthy goal, and I think it's imperative for everyone to read and respond carefully to any and all information posted here at DU.

However I'm going to lock this discussion because you are asking for the membership to debate new rules.

I've discussed at length elsewhere why a fact-checking rule is unfeasible. We cannot ask Jurors to act as fact-checkers because the Jury system works to handle subjective situations, not objective ones. If we send fact checks to Juries, Jury members will be forced to perform the fact checking. Most people will have neither the time nor the inclination to do this, and so in many cases the Jury decision will be wrong.

In addition, fact checks will be requested on every subjective thing that anyone disagrees with. The alert system will be flooded with alerts asking people to determine things like, let's say, whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Subsequently, the system would be flooded with appeals as people who have had their posts removed for posting "misinformation" will come to me asking for an adjudication. I will then have to fact check everything personally. It would not work, practically speaking.

If you would like to repost this as a general call for people to be vigilant when it comes to misinformation on DU -- to remind them that they should point it out and ask the person who posted it to correct it when possible, then I wholeheartedly approve. However, you've tried to make this thread a debate about changing DU rules, and as such, I'm locking it.