The Fediverse increasingly has worse disinformation than other spaces. The problem is, the users don't read the news very much, and many have a culture that rejects reading and discussing news. So the pool of people who talk about the news is too small for fact checks. Media literacy here is so low that people go viral with massacre denialism because they read something in Middle East Eye and don't know it's Qatar's Global Times, a propaganda outfit used for things Al-Jazeera won't touch.
@DiegoBeghin Hey, at least I haven't seen much of that khumra, whereas I still see people defend lack of default global search and obsessing over content warnings.
@Alon Want to have some fun? find a controversial topic in society that most of the fedverse has settled on a side and suggest that it is worth understanding the opposite side. Abortion is my favorite, but there are are several others where you can suggest someone who disagrees isn't a bigot of some sort and get people really made.
@bluGill Oh, that problem is bigger on Bluesky than here; on Bluesky the most interesting accounts are the handful of non-left-of-center survivors, because they know how to have conversations and not just dunk. But on Bluesky people consume news compulsively.
@Alon I'm not active on any other social network these days. How could one tell if the problem was worse in a feed here than it would be in on FB, X, Threads, etc, driven by opaque algorithms. I suppose on the fediverse, you could direct your concerns to "super boosters" (e.g. Lisa Melton). But anyway, the people I follow seem to have a pretty high level of media literacy, at least compared to the people (and some bots) who comment on articles in commercial media outlets.
@ozdreaming 1. I see much less denialism on Bluesky (not zero, sadly) these days; I see more justificationism there but it usually gets ratioed.
Twitter has a chronological feed.
My Twitter mutuals who aren't in the weeds on Israel manage to avoid sharing Middle East Eye fake news; my mutuals here, with similar views, do share these pieces.
People here clearly care about media literacy, they just lack it, hence too much uncritical sharing of Al-Jazeera or Axel-Springer media.
I only joined Mastodon recently, but I have been quite shocked at the way so many here seem to live in an alternate reality news bubble in which they are never exposed or completely ignore any information or opinion that does not fit their narrative, at least with regards to the Israel-Gaza war and the history of the conflict.
@BenRossTransit@bdsint@ozdreaming Twitter is full of justificationism, but I haven't seen there that I do see here is pretty reasonable people share Middle East Eye denialism. Over there, if you're sharing denialism, you do it out of anti-Semitism and extremism; here, it's because it sounds reasonable to the untrained eye.
@Alon@bdsint@ozdreaming Here I find it useful to respond. You don't convince the denialists, but the exchange is civil and is useful to readers. Over there, it looks like anything you write would be drowned out by the flood of name-calling and intentional dishonesty.
@BenRossTransit@bdsint@ozdreaming Yeah, sometimes ( @NadavPV and I sometimes argue with Sherifa Zuhur on this and she recognized that she shouldn't have boosted EI denialism; her feed is pretty good these days). But then when it's accounts that boost other accounts that engage in denialism, do I @ the denialist or the reasonable person who boosted the denialist?
@Alon@bdsint@ozdreaming@NadavPV I'm selective in what I respond to, based as much on the content as on who posted it. I like to point out logical inconsistencies. Like the people who blame Hamas on Netanyahu but also blame Israel for blockading Gaza.
@BenRossTransit@bdsint@ozdreaming@NadavPV Yeah, here and on Bluesky I'm generally patient with Ukraine-and-Palestine supporters but avoid tankies (muting here, blocking on Bluesky).
@Alon Have you ever thought about putting together a list of biased sources like that that people tend not to realize are biased? Obviously a comprehensive list might be impractical, but a dozen or so of the most common culprits would make a good blog post.
@kechpaja On Israel/Palestine, the most important thing to avoid is Al-Jazeera, measured by the ratio of the quality of its reporting to its reputation. (AJ has decent reporting in English on issues Qatar doesn't care about.) People see it engage in Al-Ahli bombing trutherism and decide it's okay to dabble in that too.
In European politics, the equivalent is Politico: Axel-Springer has its biases and just because some of its reporting is solid doesn't mean it should be taken uncritically.
@bdsint@kechpaja It gets a lot worse. They do a lot of interviews in Gaza. Traditionally, they'd cut off any interviewee who blamed Hamas, Turkey, or Qatar for their problems and only continue interviews with those who blamed Israel, the West, or Saudi Arabia. It's changed somewhat recently (as in, this month) - criticism of Hamas is tolerated more. But that in itself tells us what Qatar's position is, subject to American pressure to tone down Al-Jazeera's bias.
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