this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2022
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The solution is real simple, don't turn to wikipedia on matters that are politically charged. Get your news from a news outlet, instead of expecting that a crowdsourced online encyclopaedia might be up on current events.
There's tradeoffs involved. Even when a journalist is doing a good job, they may have an editor butcher the article to suit a specific narrative (source: i have journalist friends). And most times, news outlets refuse to publish sources: even on the web, it's rare to find an article that has actual links to more detailed information.
Wikipedia's strength is transparency:
Overall, there are great articles out there on any medium. But on average, i'd choose a wikipedia article over any other media any day of the week :)
Actually, so would I for almost everything - except journalism. Why? because wikipedia was never intended to be used that way. Reading news there is like searching for a palimpsest on a roll of recycled toilet paper. Sure, it could be there, but why would you ever think to look there for it?
Wikipedia has a big part to play, but this kind of thing just brings the information war right up onto the pages of what is arguably the best reference we have.
Curation suggests that we should protect it from becoming involved in an ideological tug of war lest it be damaged in the process.
Do not discount the power of sleepless obsessives. The volunteers at Wikipedia are compulsive about the rules. Facebook needs to hire them to fact check.
Or we could just not have Facebook™ fact checkers at all. Wtf?
Because that be inconvenient for you?
No because Mark Zuckerburg obviously shouldn't be the one to decide what is and isn't true. Of course.
Yes, that's not working so well, obviously. But there is a cynical assault on truth. It's literally a 1984 meme today. We need to get back to journalistic standards for publishing news. For the most part, the hordes of Wikipedia contributors do a good job at it.
You really think Facebook would be unbiased when choosing which wikipedia contributors to hire? I think it would work like the media, where news companies only hire people who already agree with their worldview. What a silly plan you have.
You're assuming FB cares enough to have opinions on most things. It only cares about generating traffic. Spreading disinformation and generating echo chambers is only a side-effect.
If FB was losing revenue (through boycott or regulation) because it was allowing rampant fake news, the easiest thing it could do would be to hire a pool of people with Wikipedia experience. Do you have a better solution?
The funny thing is that since it was decided that social media platforms would have the role of fighting misinformation, millions of people have left these platforms for alternatives that do not restrict free speech. Telegram, Parler, Mastodon, Gab, Lemmy of course, all created very recently.
You assume I care about Facebook's revenues. I am not offering them a solution because I hope Facebook is shut down forever. You are asking a wolf how best to protect sheep. In which case, yes hire wikipedia editors to "fact check".
I disagree. Wikipedia has historically been a good source for gathering information about an evolving event. It should of course be taken with a grain of salt, but when you have gobs of editors reviewing and revising, misinformation tends to get weeded out pretty quickly.