this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
557 points (98.6% liked)
Privacy
31876 readers
1 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Reddit has long had an issue with confidently providing false statements as fact. Sometimes I would come along a question that I was well educated on, and the top voted responses were all very clearly wrong, but sounded correct to someone who didn't know better. This made me question all the other posts that I had believed without knowing enough to tell otherwise.
Llms also have the same issue of confidently telling lies that sound true. Training on Reddit will only make this worse.
The problem is that SEO has made it impossible to find accurate information easily, since even "old, trustworthy brands" can't be trusted online. [This is an excellent article that explains the problem thoroughly, and brings receipts] (https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/).
This is a great example of why it's so important to emphasize teaching critical thinking in school right now. Misinformation and disinformation is just going to continue to grow.
Literally why I bookmarked it. I'm an online teacher, so I'm going to advocate for adding that article to a grade 10 course that's used by thousands of students each year.
I'm a student teacher right now in elementary! I try to get my kids to think critically whenever I can. I hear kids talk about insane shit they saw/heard on tiktok (I got into an argument with a student who thought Slenderman was 100% real because of something they saw on tiktok) and I try to really get them to think and actually justify why they believe things.
An uphill battle for sure. I wish you the best of luck.
Somewhat related:
A recommendation about teaching controversial topics: you need to build connection first.
I mean, that's true of all teaching, but when you start to question the (prejudiced) things they're hearing from trusted adults at home, you really need to have a strong relationship with the students.
Being an anti-racist pro-SOGI educator in conservative communities is hard.
I wish you success in your career! Teachers have such an opportunity to make a huge impact on the world.
Great article, thanks for mentioning it!
That's a really good article, and it does a good job of highlighting the issues with modern day search results.
I've been guilty to use "best x" pages before, but if the website with the "best of page" doesn't have specific reviews linked I usually look up individual product reviews for the good sounding items on other websites.
@Fubarberry yes I saw this a lot too. Highly upvoted confidently incorrect comments, with the real answer or an answer debunking them with links to factual sources less upvoted.
Happened to me as well.
I am a lawyer and I would get down voted for posts explaining the law that contained citations to the actual applicable statute if people didn't like the statute. Using reddit up votes as a measure of correctness is fundamentally a dumb idea.
@collapse_already yeah Reddit also tended to mistake explanation for agreement and savagely downvote it.
specious /spē′shəs/ adjective
and then the real answer will be hidden or something silly, or in some cases where money is involved the correct answer might have been removed
This can be said to https://news.ycombinator.com/ as well. I wonder how much of this is due to sock puppets and bots.
Yeah all of my most down voted reddit comments were the ones where I replied about something I'm an actual expert in. Scary stuff
I spent 20 years as a producer, developer, and project manager in the lottery and games industry.
Trying to explain how lottery and games work to people and have them hear me makes me want to cry.
Fascinating! I’d love to hear a little about it, if you don’t mind.
Certainly, I'm always happy to share with inquisitive minds.
Is there any particular question you'd like me to address?
Not really, I never paid much mind to it. I’m curious about the whole industry I guess, or anything you’d like to share or set the record straight about.
Oh there's lots I have to set the record straight about and there's lots I could talk about, but without being asked a specific question that would just leave me to write an open-ended essay and I'm not up for it right now