Is it enough to just subscribe to a reliable source that creates articles? Or will you have to share the truth somewhere in messengers?
Don’t trust anything online
Critical thinking.
We’ve had a nice run of the world where photos and videos could be used as proofs of the reports and everyone with a camera could be a trusted journalist (about 1895–2025). This world is now gone. Just like in 1800s, now you either trust someone’s words or don’t, and reputation of the individual is the only thing you might consider. Established newspapers are relevant again, citizen journalism is dying.
Ehhhh I don’t trust ny times if there’s anything related to Gaza or Israel.
It just shows that newspapers were manipulative since the beginning, although it’s generally true that they still don’t openly lie to you (the traditional ones) and prefer to bend the truth to unbelievable points.
The same way we did up until now. Reliable sources and critical thinking. That these aren’t very popular lately doesn’t mean that they disappeared.
Yep. The old ways are back in, basically. And the conveniences of the Internet mutated into their own monster in AI and broke all the promises information technology made.
what’s a reliable source? does the CIA world factbook, for example, count as a reliable source?
Take your time and think about things. It’s a lot easier to overcome your cognitive biases when you slow down. Saying that, this is going to be a tough road we go down. Always having a nagging doubt about whether something is real or not is going to weaken the foundations of our reality in ways that open us to further manipulation.
When I was young, the assumption was that technology and the internet could never actually be trusted. It always felt weird when that shifted.
In a way, it’s kind of comforting going back to that. I think a lot of us just won’t do that with tech anymore.
So refreshing to see another person say this.
Everyone on the internet is a liar. I have been using that assumption since the bbs days.
I was dumbfounded when people were putting thier lives online as reall people then horrified that people don’t seem to understand just how much online is just utter bullshit with the worst part: they repeat it as facts.
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
I was just explaining this absolutely ancient meme to my partner yesterday. They weren’t terminally online in the '90s, so they didn’t know that it’s all just dogs telling lies.
When I was young, the assumption was that no information could be trusted. We were taught that everything you read was written by a person with an agenda; who that person is and what their agenda might be needs to be accounted for when parsing any message.
Same way I do now: source info from many sources. Then use my best judgement.
There’s no way to know 💯 if you’re being shat on even before AI. You just do the best you can.
A question I’ve struggled with my whole life. Some people are really good liars.
Critical thinking is great, but none of us can sustain it perpetually. Shortcuts and heuristics are the way we actually evaluate the world.
The good news is that self-awareness will improve your ability to detect deception regardless of the quality of the lie. learn what kind of deceptions ring true to your ears, and you’ll be less credulous. Be doubly suspicious of the things that confirm your priors.
- accept you don’t know what’s happening outside your 50km radius
- ?
As soon as the information comes from somewhere you can’t verify directly, assume that it is misinformation. You can reduce the likelyhood of it being misinformation by vetting sources and verifying that other sources give the same information. But in the end - if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, you cannot fully depend on it, just make educated guesses if the sources that have proven themselves to you agree on something.
Actually, this has been true since at least the advent of Facebook, AI just increases the scale. Look up the Cambridge Analytica stuff.
It depends on the criticality and sensitivity of the information, but let’s say that the information is of such a nature that I care about it’s authenticity and integrity (in no particular order):
- I verify the information with at least three independent sources.
- I vet the information: where is the information coming from? Is the information probable? What is the general tone? What perspective is it present from?
- I vet the sources: do the sources have any particular agenda? Do they have an interest in/anything to gain by spreading false information?
Its always been this way, that’s a good starting point. People have been pushing bullshit since forever.
Photos or even video have been unreliable since we learned how to use a light table and an editor. Or actors and a scene.
So:
We really need to get back to facts matter in journalism, contacts and government have a reputation as individuals.
But good luck with that.
I downloaded an offline copy of Wikipedia in 2019, so probably that. Others, use wayback machine, it’s too big to upload here.
ai slop is really getting better nowadays.
i just initially doubt anything until i get a matching news from more sources.
reading more variety helps since you get a base list of what sources tend to put up reliable news.
matching news from more sources
loool, looks like that’s it with the sources. thanks, billionaires!
