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The Messenger

Entry 2359, on 2024-08-12 at 12:40:14 (Rating 2, News)

Summary

The internet is often blamed for social problems like disinformation, declining trust in institutions, and shorter attention spans. However, I argue that these problems existed before the internet's widespread use and that blaming the internet is a convenient scapegoat.

I point out that disinformation can be both genuinely false information and information labelled as such to discredit it. I believe users should determine the validity of information, and cite Twitter's "Community Notes" feature as a positive example.

Regarding declining trust in institutions, I attribute it to bias and superficiality in reporting, not the internet itself. I believe sourcing information from diverse sources helps mitigate bias.

Finally, I argue that the internet allows for both shallow and deep engagement with information, citing long-form podcasts as an example of in-depth content. I suggest that skepticism towards institutions is a separate issue, independent of the technology used to distribute information. I conclude by urging readers not to blame the internet for social problems, but to consider the context and complexity of these issues.

Full Text

What social problems can be blame the internet for? For some people, the internet is a convenient scapegoat for explaining various modern trends which are inconvenient for those in positions of power. No doubt there is some truth in this, because every new invention, especially when use for communications, will inevitably have some negative consequences, but we shouldn't look at the negatives without also considering the positives, and we also should be aware that just putting blame on something, without providing any convincing evidence, is just lazy and dishonest.

So what are some of the problems which the internet often gets the blame for? Well, disinformation would be maybe the most prominent, but causing lack of trust in traditional institutions (especially the media) would be another big one, and then there is the lack of attention span and the withdrawal from "real life" to focus on a "virtual life" with "virtual friends" instead.

What are my thoughts on these? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I do have a few ideas relating to these topics!

First, disinformation. This is a tricky one, because disinformation (and the related misinformation) can mean two things: first, genuinely false of misleading material used for the purposes of deception, propaganda, or even radicalisation; and second, information which might have a significant level of truth but which is labelled disinformation in an attempt to discredit it.

As a person with libertarian leanings I say let the market decide. The "market" in this case is the users of the platform distributing the information, not the owners of the platform which have been consistently shown to be biased.

X (previously known as Twitter) is a leader in this area with its "Community Notes" feature. X users can add notes to a post questioning its truth or validity and users get to vote on these notes to make them permanent. There have been posts which I initially felt quite outraged about, but before I commented I checked the Notes to find out what extra context might exist. In many cases I changed my mind and either didn't comment, or left a more nuanced comment than I was initially going to.

So that is a great way to allow posts on any topic but to control the reach and effectiveness of a post through community action. Compare that with posts on other sites, like Facebook, where the comment mechanism is simply shut down because some of the comments are not what the original poster (usually a mainstream media company, like the NZ Herald) preferred to see.

So I say, sure we will get bad information, but we will also get good, and which is which should be decided on based on the knowledge of the platform users.

Second, what about declining trust in traditional organisations, especially the media and politicians? Well, this has been a phenomenon since before the internet went mainstream. A review of journalism shows distrust started falling in the 1970s, and the internet only became widely used 20 or more years after that. It seems to me that there are other issues causing distrust of the media, and those might only be accelerated by the internet.

These factors are bias and superficiality. There are numerous independent organisations evaluating media bias, some of which publish their methodology, and they all evaluate news sources in similar ways. Most are left biased, but there are some with a right bias as well. Which should you believe? Well I would say none of them. I source information from many places so all the biases hopefully cancel out leaving me either very confused or with a more balanced understanding of the news item.

Finally, the superficiality problem is associated with the claim of lower attention spans and withdrawal from real life, so I will handle those together. There does seem to be a trend towards short headlines, quick videos, and generally more superficial and trivial news being presented today, but I don't blame the internet for that.

The internet provides information in whatever form the user wants. For example, I listened to a podcast last week about "Neuralink", a new technology being developed which uses brain implants to allow a person to control real devices, for example a computer, by just thinking about it. It is currently primarily aimed at people with disabilities like quadriplegia, but eventually it might be how we all interact with our devices. Who doesn't want to retrieve some piece of information by just thinking about it?

The point was though, that this podcast was almost 9 hours long, and it interviewed the people actually responsible for this new technology. It was at a moderate technical level and was both informative and entertaining. There is very little equivalent material outside of the internet. And who would claim a 9 hour podcast is superficial?

And that isn't unusual. At least three of the podcasts I regularly listen to are typically several hours in length. By the way, if you were wondering, they are podcasts by Michael Shermer, Lex Fridman, and Joe Rogan. And there are several episodes of these podcasts which I have disagreed with; Joe in particular is quite credulous when it comes to subjects of doubtful truth, such as UFOs!

In the past commentators have blamed new technologies, such as the printing press, talk radio, and paperback books as sources of misinformation, trivia, and bias, but we all got over that. It seems that people are becoming more skeptical of established institutions independently of the technology used to distribute news.

It's not the internet's fault. Don't blame the messenger for the message!

Comment 1 (7699) by Anonymous on 2024-08-15 at 21:44:42:

Are you denying that the internet is full of disinformation? It's there every day so how can you ignore it so easily?

Comment 2 (7700) by OJB on 2024-08-16 at 11:04:50:

I don't think it is *full* of disinformation. Obviously, there is disinformation on the internet, just like there is on TV news and in newspapers, but there is plenty of good information too. Unfortunately it is just a phenomenon we have to accept if we are going to allow free speech. The answer is for people to be more skeptical and to use corrective mechanisms like the X community notes I mentioned in the post.

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