The Dublin riots and a thought piece on misinformation

The Dublin Riots and the role of misinformation

On November 23, 2023, Dublin witnessed violent riots led by a far-right mob, triggered by a knife attack outside a school, injuring three children and a woman.

Protesters clashed with police, set vehicles ablaze, and looted shops. This chaos was partly fueled by misinformation, particularly reports suggesting a foreign national was responsible for the attack.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris attributed the violence to a "lunatic faction driven by far-right ideology" (source).

This event exemplifies how misinformation can exacerbate tensions and lead to real-world violence, raising crucial questions about our approach to combatting misinformation.

What is misinformation and why is it different to disinformation?

It's critical to differentiate between misinformation (spread unintentionally) and disinformation (spread with intent to deceive). Understanding this distinction helps in crafting appropriate responses.

I'm going to assume that most people don't want to spread things for nefarious reasons, in which case the solution to the spread of misinformation is probably not a technical one but a human one.

It feels like I'm going back to my history classes where the importance of verifying sources in multiple ways was emphasised. This article from the ODI Global here is well worth a read!

Perhaps most importantly, we need to bridge the polarised communities and put a human approach at the heart of any strategy.

Humans are usually good at spotting misinformation

A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers has shown that normal readers' accuracy judgments can be as effective as professional fact-checkers. This approach could be huge if the public was allowed to play a direct role in combating misinformation.

Sadly so many social media platforms are just not set up to handle this type of feedback. Their mechanisms for raising concernss are often very complicated, and ineffective at "flagging" inappropriate content.

Wonder what will happen when AI starts to really take over? Will people still be able to spot bad actors?

"Our results therefore indicate that a relatively small number of laypeople can produce an aggregate judgment, given only the headline and lede of an article, that approximates the judgments of professional fact-checkers—particularly for political headlines."

Have a look at the MIT paper here

The Importance of access to good information

Claire Wardle wrote an interesting article on this topic. In it she cites an article from Data Society that highlights the risk of data voids. Misinformation thrives in information vacuums. Ensuring that accurate and reliable information is accessible is crucial in preventing misinformation from taking root.

This is really important in the world where we are training our AI overlords on data amased from the internet. We need to question what is missing and the implications if key information is not available.

I think there is something in this.... if AGI is coming for us what are the gaps we need to plug before it gets here?

Is social media a cancer on our society?

For those that read some of my posts they will know I am not a fan of social media, largely for these reasons we are discussing. Its not helped by these platforms often limit the data available to researchers, making it difficult to analyze and counteract misinformation effectively.

And as we know from the numerous catfishing programs, you have no idea who you are talking to online!

There are people trying to combat it

The BBC's Verify team, comprising 60 journalists, and the likes of Ros Atkins focuses on verifying and fact-checking information, demonstrating how media organizations can actively combat misinformation.

This is a great step, and provides validation of what is considered "good" but its always going to be on the back foot when it comes to the likes of social media as doing this work takes time.

By contrast it take no time at all to share, like, retweet misinformation and for that information to go viral.

A hypothetical (very controvertial) solution

As with everything in life there are compromises. Want something to be more secure, its going to be less usable. Want something to be TRUE, then surely we need to be willing to compromise on our privacy.

The question then comes down to what sort of compormises are we as a society willing to make to ensure things like this can't happen?

One way to prevent misinformation could be through radical transparency. Assuming that a system could monitor everything, that everyone does (and of course not do bad things with that information) then there would be no way that people could relase or spread misinformation.

This is a bit black mirror esque I know.

Now lots of people would be up in arms about this for sure, not sure even I would be happy being surveilled all day, everyday and yet billions of people put their whole lives on Facebook, WhatsApp etc etc.

It would however need is unequivocal buy-in from everyone in the world for it to work properly and sure as anything there would be people wanting to circumvent it and do these nefarious things...

But where is the line?

If misinformation is leading to riots, divided communities should we not even consider giving up some of our "freedoms" to protect humanity, to ensure that truth wins out, even if its painful?

Think about keeping secrets, or tell little white lies, the more you try to hide them the more you need to keep on embelishing the story to keep that secret hidden. If people were always truthful then we'd solve a lot of promlems a lot quicker.

I recognise this is a dangerous path to consider. I'm not suggesting it's the right solution, but it's certainly something to think about...

#Iamhuman