this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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I don't think there's a silver bullet for it. What works is critical thinking and humility about what you don't know. One good rule of thumb is to keep in mind that things are virtually always nuanced and complicated. When ever someone presents something as simple, straight forward, black and white etc. an alarm should go off. Even when what is being said might not technically be incorrent it's still often just one side of the story. There's always the other side to it as well. Nothing/no one is all bad or all good. If one stands for a cause but can't make a single good faith argument against their own view about it then they're not thinking honestly about it.
Sure, but I'd love a software way to reduce it even if there's no silver bullet. All the critical thinking in the world won't make me immune to propaganda, and realistically the average person isn't going to change any time soon.
If there's always another side, then there's another side to your "there's always another side" argument, so perhaps there are some one-sided topics like "does something exist".
Yeah that's another rule-of-thumb: Never say never or always, there's always an exception. I'm also fully aware of the irony of that whole sentence.
Yeah I get what you mean. Would be nice to have but I don't know how such an add-on would work in practice. I imagine that rather than filtering it out it would instead need to be something that adds a correction/context next to it. There's usually atleast a kernel of truth even in misinformation so simply just hiding it doesn't seem optimal either. An interesting point about free-speech I heard recently was that by silencing the fringes it leaves the rest of us ignorant to what views people hold as well as prevents us from hearing all the evidence that they're wrong. Generally I'm not against misinformation on places like Lemmy but what I do wish is that the top comment on each thread was the one providing nuance, context and correction. This place just doesn't encourage that. There's a set of accepted beliefs and viewpoints and anything going against that is just met with hostility. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful psychological phenomenom and people don't like their beliefs challenged.
Restricting new accounts.