>1: The Mark Twain adage "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
"The one who first states a case seems right: Until the other comes and cross-examines." Proverbs 18:17
Reserving judgement until one has all (or, at least, most) of the facts is the first step towards preventing the spread of lies.
"Always tell the truth. Or, at least don't lie." --Jordan Peterson
Humans are very quick to spread rumors, gossip, half-heard/misheard 'facts', uncorroborated/unsourced/unevidenced stories, etc because we have an innate desire to tell others something "secret". To feel like we are in a position of authority or power because we know something you don't.
And sometimes we can tell the truth that looks especially bad.
My dad likes to tell this story from when he was about 12.
One Monday morning, his little brother walked into Kindergarten with a giant black eye. His teacher asked what happened, and he replied, "my brother hit me in the head with a baseball bat."
This, of course, was obvious cause for alarm.
So they pulled my dad out of class and asked him what happened to his little brother, to which he replied, "I hit him in the head with a baseball bat."
As they were getting ready to call their dad for a parent-teacher conference - possibly even to consider pressing charges on behalf of the injured child, they went and found their 9-year-old sister, and asked her what happened to her little brother. She told them, "oh - my older brother hit him in the head with a baseball bat."
But she went on to provide context: "he was hitting pop flies to me to catch to practice for softball season, and our little brother ran behind him while he was on a backswing, and got knocked down."
Neither brother lied about what happened.
Indeed, they both "told the truth".
But neither told enough of the story to prevent/correct some likely misconceptions about what had happened. Had they been asked, "why did you brother hit you"/"why did you hit your brother", either would have filled-in the 10 seconds of backstory necessary to change the impression of the adults asking from horror over abuse to sympathy for an accident, and relief it was not more serious than "just" a black eye.
As data and information moves in ever-larger volumes ever-faster around the world, curating it into something that is both understandable and which contains enough context to be able to come to a proper conclusion about what you're seeing/hearing is becoming possibly the biggest issue facing society as a whole.
10 seconds of video probably doesn't have enough context to be fully understood - especially when it could be cut together, deep-faked, dubbed, etc
Solve the problem of ensuring information is reliable, accurate, and contains enough context to be understood properly, and you'll have solved social media
"The one who first states a case seems right: Until the other comes and cross-examines." Proverbs 18:17
Reserving judgement until one has all (or, at least, most) of the facts is the first step towards preventing the spread of lies.
"Always tell the truth. Or, at least don't lie." --Jordan Peterson
Humans are very quick to spread rumors, gossip, half-heard/misheard 'facts', uncorroborated/unsourced/unevidenced stories, etc because we have an innate desire to tell others something "secret". To feel like we are in a position of authority or power because we know something you don't.
And sometimes we can tell the truth that looks especially bad.
My dad likes to tell this story from when he was about 12.
One Monday morning, his little brother walked into Kindergarten with a giant black eye. His teacher asked what happened, and he replied, "my brother hit me in the head with a baseball bat."
This, of course, was obvious cause for alarm.
So they pulled my dad out of class and asked him what happened to his little brother, to which he replied, "I hit him in the head with a baseball bat."
As they were getting ready to call their dad for a parent-teacher conference - possibly even to consider pressing charges on behalf of the injured child, they went and found their 9-year-old sister, and asked her what happened to her little brother. She told them, "oh - my older brother hit him in the head with a baseball bat."
But she went on to provide context: "he was hitting pop flies to me to catch to practice for softball season, and our little brother ran behind him while he was on a backswing, and got knocked down."
Neither brother lied about what happened.
Indeed, they both "told the truth".
But neither told enough of the story to prevent/correct some likely misconceptions about what had happened. Had they been asked, "why did you brother hit you"/"why did you hit your brother", either would have filled-in the 10 seconds of backstory necessary to change the impression of the adults asking from horror over abuse to sympathy for an accident, and relief it was not more serious than "just" a black eye.
As data and information moves in ever-larger volumes ever-faster around the world, curating it into something that is both understandable and which contains enough context to be able to come to a proper conclusion about what you're seeing/hearing is becoming possibly the biggest issue facing society as a whole.
10 seconds of video probably doesn't have enough context to be fully understood - especially when it could be cut together, deep-faked, dubbed, etc
Solve the problem of ensuring information is reliable, accurate, and contains enough context to be understood properly, and you'll have solved social media