👋 Hello @bender, welcome to twtxt.net, a Yarn.social Pod! To get started you may want to check out the pod's Discover feed to find users to follow and interact with. To follow new users, use the `⨁ Follow` button on their profile page or use the Follow form and enter a Twtxt URL. You may also find other feeds of interest via Feeds. Welcome! 🤗

(#v55m6bq) @bender That's what I call it "Information Warfare". There are entire (scurrilous) business who pay money to others to promote "misinformation" or "propaganda".

(#x7oliha) @bender Hmmm this _should not_ be happening... @darch can you look into this? I did notice this too at first, but then it went away 🤷‍♂️

@bender Welcome to Yarn.social! 👋 And my Pod 🤗

(#x7oliha) Hi @bender and thanks for letting us know. I have never noticed this, but I see it now too. What device and browser are you using?

(#v55m6bq) @prologic I agree with you, we should be discussing ideas openly and transparently. Because it's though discussion that we can get the reality. As @bender says "people spreading things they believe to be right", maybe we are ourselves spreading false claims, without knowing, we can only know by exchanging ideas, and being open. The biggest question is what is "misinformation", I believe the answer change according your beliefs. Many times we have seen what was categorize as "official" misinformation, being actually real.

(#rgv7q3a) @bender On chrome-based browsers, it's getting your time zone automatically. I'm watching that on Firefox is not working, I'll take a look, perhaps the JS function is different in other browsers. For the next part > royally, and utterly, confusing I laugh a bit at this one 😅 I agree. It's confusing, you get dizzy watching so many options, I'll explain in another twt. If anyone has some ideas on how to reduce that confusion, that would be great! and > my two pence hey, glad to receive pence instead of cents 😀

(#v55m6bq) @tkanos @prologic @bender I think we cannot ignore the fact that there are nations with "cyberwarfare" divisions. Hundreds, possibility thousands, of people who sit in rooms all day every day--it's their job--doing nothing but creating and spreading what we call "misinformation" or "disinformation". That is a very different phenomenon from ignorant people spreading beliefs that happen to be dangerous. It is an explicit attempt to cause harm. Social media sites have been horrible conduits of this, but misinformation circulates many ways, including through trusted news media. One aspect of cyberwarfare that information warriors take advantage of is that well-meaning people *spread the bad information by reacting to it*. Misinformation tends to target the emotions, and receptive people (which is all of us, basically) react to it on an emotional level. However, well-meaning people tend to react to the logical content of the information. They debate the facts being presented, or they attack the logical structure. But this functions to *reinforce the bad information in people who react emotionally*. In other words, the process of debating misinformation functions to reinforce it. Bad actors know this full well. I've read training materials for spreading misinformation--they know exactly what they're doing. I don't know what the answer is, but we can't be naive and think that just by "debating" we are going to stop people from spreading bad ideas. That's like throwing water on an oil fire--it makes it worse, not better. We need to be better equipped than this.

(#v55m6bq) I still believe that debating is the most peaceful way to deal with disagreement because @abucci, the point on debating in social network, is not stopping people from spreading bad ideas. Is to make everybody else that look at the debate think, and not fall on those bad ideas, by hiding the bad ideas, and not debating them, we may push others people to believe in them, and we may push people that already believe in them to stay in an echo chamber and become worse. @bender the problem with that sentence is that if one day two people may disagree, and they may convince themself that the other is spreading hate speech,/disinformation or worse than the other is a nazi, and ask for physical harm.

(#v55m6bq) @bender @tkanos I'm blanking on where I first read it--might be Jared Yates Sexton, or maybe Sarah Kendzior--but I'm of a mind that sentiments like "debate is the best way to resolve disputes" are kind of nostalgic and naive because they ignore the conditions we're currently living in. Sure, if we lived in a healthy society with a healthy information space, widespread respect for differing points of view, a relative lack of suffering, etc etc etc, then yes, maybe that would be true. There were points in our history (I'm speaking of the US because that's where I'm from) when we approximated those ideals, at least for some people, and many of us aspired to perfect them. But today, in 2022, we do not live in those conditions. There are many people who actively want to destroy any progress towards these ideals we've managed to make, and who actively, publicly advocate for going backwards from there. Debate is no longer the best way to resolve disputes, in these conditions, not with people who are trying to force the world backwards. It is foolish to think otherwise. It is just as foolish as believing water puts out all fires and throwing water onto an oil fire. You have to recognize the reality you're living in, then choose the right tool for the job. If you're living in a time where political violence is normalized/is being normalized and demonization is rampant, and you're facing a bad faith argument from a bad actor who is preaching something like antisemitism, you don't reach for "debate" as your tool of choice. You reach for "deplatforming" (for example), because that demonstrably works. You take them, and their damaging ideas, off the public square completely and keep them out of it.