Misinformation (the internet mirror)

[Danoff]

It occurs to me that humanity is losing the battle over information. It seemed at first as though the internet was a place where people mostly posted the truth (and porn). Now it seems that the internet is a place where people post everything they can think of (and porn). The spread of conspiracies, weaponized to mislead people, has gotten so pervasive, that it's difficult to tell what's even real on the internet anymore. AI is complicating matters by generating images and even video that look so real that it is at times difficult to tell whether what you're looking at is reality.

If you're presented with a news story or article, is it real? Was it written by AI regurgitating various truths and insanities from corners of the internet? Is it written by someone who is paid to mislead you? Are the citations real? Are the photos real? It is still possible to tell the truth, but I think not for long.

At some point the entire internet is just a mirror. You browse to see what you already think, and it will reflect it back at you perfectly. At that point, we have lost the promise of the internet to the point where it isn't just rendered useless, it also destroyed some of the old knowledge that we used to have. Households used to have encyclopedias and dictionaries. They used to have news that at least tried to hold itself to reality. The internet displaced all of that, but it is rapidly turning into a noisy mirror, and losing its usefulness.

I have no doubt that you will still be able to make purchases that you can somewhat reasonably think are legitimate purchases on the internet. Because people have to sell things. But aside from that, the internet is drowning in noise and adapting itself to give you the noise you like.

 

[Keef]

If Congress in the US doesn't pass AI legislation within the next year or so then they're just completely out of touch. Something as simple as a "generated by artificial intelligence" label on everything that is, from images to videos to articles, would be a good start. That would at least prevent professionals from pawning off AI, although it would do nothing to stop us peasants from simply cropping it out and resharing. But the professional creators and authors et al should be the trustworthy ones and they're the ones who set examples of etiquette so I think regulating AI in commercial forms is a good way to start. After all, we thoroughly regulate every other commercial industry, and spreading false information is just as dangerous as spreading E. Coli.

 

[Exorcet]

There is a lot of filtering based on user preference these days but for what it's worth I seem to avoid a lot of it. I can't say that I avoid it all, but staying logged out of accounts and avoiding tracking where possible has helped me to stay more in control of how information I find is being filtered. The mirror problem is very real but I think it's not the most difficult thing to overcome if you're aware of it.

Misinformation is a bigger problem in my mind but I've never been convinced that the internet has made this worse than the pre internet days. At the very least the internet can present a counter viewpoint easily if one is willing to search for it and it isn't automatically filtered out. How you determine which viewpoint is real is a harder problem but at least knowing there are different views should provide some defense against being taken in by one.

 

[Nexus]

Misinformation is a bigger problem in my mind but I've never been convinced that the internet has made this worse than the pre internet days. At the very least the internet can present a counter viewpoint easily if one is willing to search for it and it isn't automatically filtered out. How you determine which viewpoint is real is a harder problem but at least knowing there are different views should provide some defense against being taken in by one.

IMO the main danger of misinformation on the internet is recommendation algorithms, and how easy it is for individuals with... interesting viewpoints to form echo-chambers.

Anti-vaxxers, anti-5G people, and the rest of the cookers aren't afraid to be seen out in the open now, either.

 

[Danoff]

Misinformation is a bigger problem in my mind but I've never been convinced that the internet has made this worse than the pre internet days.

I agree. I'm extrapolating the trend.

At the very least the internet can present a counter viewpoint easily if one is willing to search for it and it isn't automatically filtered out. How you determine which viewpoint is real is a harder problem but at least knowing there are different views should provide some defense against being taken in by one.

Right, but it is still a problem. Especially when it becomes an unsolvable problem. If the internet is ultimately so full of junk that you can't tell what's real and what's not, it is basically rendered useless.

These days an AI-generated article can be pieced together based on your search, and the citations, images, and even user comments, "likes", etc. can all be fabricated. It's not impossible to tell today, but what happens when it is impossible to tell?

Am I real? I think you can be reasonably sure based on how long I've been here, and you can plug in the things I submit here and see if they exist anywhere else. You can probably tell, especially due to mistakes, that I'm not a piece of chat software. But you have to admit that it's not THAT easy to know whether I'm a real person you're talking to. And further it's difficult to know what my motivations are. Again, I've been around for a while, and you've gotten to know me a bit. So you probably know that I'm not being paid by some government to spread misinformation. But again, it's not THAT easy to tell. Based on where we're headed, the internet's informational usefulness seems to be declining rapidly.

 

[MIE1992]

I was just thinking about something like this lately. I had to re-deactivate my Facebook account because I felt like I was stuck in a version of John Carpenter's The Thing where MacReady failed. Every post just had this uncanny nature to it.

 

[TheCracker]

It occurs to me that humanity is losing the battle over information. It seemed at first as though the internet was a place where people mostly posted the truth (and porn). Now it seems that the internet is a place where people post everything they can think of (and porn). The spread of conspiracies, weaponized to mislead people, has gotten so pervasive, that it's difficult to tell what's even real on the internet anymore. AI is complicating matters by generating images and even video that look so real that it is at times difficult to tell whether what you're looking at is reality.

Until the Heritage Foundation get their way and ban 'adult material', in the US at least, like they tend to do in other theocratic countries.

 

[Danoff]

Until the Heritage Foundation get their way and ban 'adult material', in the US at least, like they tend to do in other theocratic countries.

As much as I'm sure they want to ban adult content, I don't see it happening particularly quickly. The idiot white men that are the backbone of the Trump rise to power rely heavily on porn.

 

[TheCracker]

As much as I'm sure they want to ban adult content, I don't see it happening particularly quickly. The idiot white men that are the backbone of the Trump rise to power rely heavily on porn.

They do, but then that's out of their hands now.

They've voted on mass and given the GOP, and more importantly, those that push their policy, pretty much all the power they need to do whatever it is they want. By their own admission, the Heritage Foundation have had a high success rate with pushing through their mandates with Republican governments since the early 70's.

 

[Danoff]

They do, but then that's out of their hands now.

They've voted on mass and given the GOP, and more importantly, those that push their policy, pretty much all the power they need to do whatever it is they want. By their own admission, the Heritage Foundation have had a high success rate with pushing through their mandates with Republican governments since the early 70's.

Just based on my understanding of the platform and the demographics.

Priority 0 is dismissing Trump criminal charges, installing loyalists, and releasing January 6th criminals. Priority 1 will be deportations. Priority 2 will be tariffs. Priority 3 is judges. Priority 4 is tough.

Is it a federal abortion ban? That will not be particularly popular. And while that doesn't necessarily matter like it used to, it's still a headache. Is it retribution against democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff? That's also not going to be popular, but if it's done under the guise of some kind of trumped up (yes that was on purpose) legal charges, it could fly. Is it going to be banning porn? I don't think that's going to be taken seriously at all.

 

[Exorcet]

Right, but it is still a problem. Especially when it becomes an unsolvable problem. If the internet is ultimately so full of junk that you can't tell what's real and what's not, it is basically rendered useless.

Absolutely, this is something will have to be looked out for now and in the foreseeable future.

Until the Heritage Foundation get their way and ban 'adult material', in the US at least, like they tend to do in other theocratic countries.

Nearly perfectly timed for the 100th anniversary of US prohibition era.

 

[Pupik]

At some point the entire internet is just a mirror. You browse to see what you already think, and it will reflect it back at you perfectly.

Ah, it is a mirror; but a mirror is also not perfect. Each reflection is slightly imperfect from the next reflection, due to production defects, light distortion, cleanliness, lighting angle, quality of the reflective material, discoloration, et cetera...thus, information phenomena also tends to break down over time. The rough drafts of history are rarely intact as time marches on, and sometimes we find out more later on which was left out for simplicity, convenience, fear (lack of movable type is less a problem but a dying battery may as well replace the concern).

AI cuts the corners, simplifies discussion, creates misinformation (but not necessarily "disinformation") and we're witnessing the accelerating erosion of facts due to the ability of someone to turn a profit from quickly adding more information to the Internet. Much of the populace doesn't necessarily care about the details; sites with incorrect data get web-crawled and copied repeatedly, redistribution by the masses' arguments, it becomes a cancer. Specific information then gets dumbed down across all sorts of subjects. As the masses seemingly have no limit on information overload, they just want that bottomless entertainment pit filled, and one void is merely filling another chasm ceaselessly and carelessly.

And to some extent, I think that process always occurs...history cannot encompass every individuals' successes, grand nor minute.

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past?
And with this crutch
Its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, "No, this will be the last".

 

[Imari]

These days an AI-generated article can be pieced together based on your search, and the citations, images, and even user comments, "likes", etc. can all be fabricated. It's not impossible to tell today, but what happens when it is impossible to tell?

Even if it's still possible to tell, if it's too time consuming to sort real from fake the result is the same. Or even just if the volume of content is too large and the tools to search it are too poor (I'm looking at you, Google...) to find a reasonable number of legitimate results.

As much as I'm sure they want to ban adult content, I don't see it happening particularly quickly. The idiot white men that are the backbone of the Trump rise to power rely heavily on porn.

They benefit from it being restricted and criminalised though. At the risk of sounding like a pamphlet on communism, it's a tool of oppression. If it's "banned" then it's more dangerous for people to appear in porn, and it's more dangerous to consume it. It's another thing that the government can hold over your head if someone in power wants you to go away. That's a nasty thing when looking at hot, naked people is a pretty basic human urge that's more or less hardwired into most people's brains.

Those in power will still have access though, because illegal things are available to those with sufficient power. See Epstein, Jeffrey.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Absolutely, this is something will have to be looked out for now and in the foreseeable future.

How? Do we go all "Patriots AI from MGS2" and entrust it to something "more intelligent" than ourselves?

 

[Danoff]

Those in power will still have access though, because illegal things are available to those with sufficient power. See Epstein, Jeffrey.

Trump is probably a better example.

 

[Exorcet]

How? Do we go all "Patriots AI from MGS2" and entrust it to something "more intelligent" than ourselves?

If you're asking about how we deal with misinformation, it's going to depend on how and where misinformation is used and created. It's going to be an arms race. Having multiple reliable sources of information that can be verified against each other would also help. Ideally governments could assist with this, but that assumes they aren't in midst of falling to incompetence and corruption.

 

[Imari]

Trump is probably a better example.

Probably, but half of Americans apparently think that he did nothing wrong. And arguably as president nothing is technically illegal for him now. Almost everyone seems to agree that Epstein was a monster, so in the interest of having an example that wasn't divided along party lines I went with that.

The irony being there's pretty strong links between Epstein and Trump, but that can be left implied for those inclined to trust that information.