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deleted by creator

The one thing I’m holding out hope for is that things like this won’t lead a significant number new people into getting duped.

There’s a certain portion of the population that seems to question nothing and got duped long ago by all of those “every immigrant is a rapist and murder”-type Facebook posts with links to totallyrealnews.com. That segment of idiots remains unchanged. They will believe any wild claim and never fact check as long as the misinformation fits their world view.

The question is, how many people who aren’t already lost see these low-effort AI posts and take them at face value?

Disclaimer: I say this knowing full well that well that better quality and more subtle misinformation is also possible with AI, but this ain’t it.

This article is from 2022. Why did you post it?

This is sad. Google Play should never hold this much weight in the self hosted community. For Android users dedicated to open source software, F-Droid is the target.

I don’t think SyncThing users would have much issue with the app disappearing from Google. Doing away with Google is the goal.

This problem desperately needs to be fixed, but the solution isn’t some expensive, over-engineered laser LED matrix. The solution is basic headlights that don’t blind people. You know, like every headlight that existed in the US until a few years ago.

Surely it’s not an insurmountable task to use a cheap LED bulb with the optics to give the beam proper directivity—i.e. not direct the beam into the eyes off oncoming drivers. Maybe even make it replaceable with a screwdriver. Call me crazy.

This is a major problem for all democracies, and LLM driven troll accounts probably do exist. But this xitter post is a fake error message. It’s clearly a troll.

Blocking fake accounts would help with the misinformation problem, but it’s a cat and mouse game. It could ultimately give additional credence to the trolls who slip through if the platform is assumed to be safe. The reality is that there will always be ways for fake accounts to avoid detection and to spoof account verification. Making it harder would help, but it’s not a comprehensive solution. Not to mention the fact that the platform itself has the power to manipulate public opinion, amplify their preferred narrative, etc.

The solution I’ve always preferred is the mentality the 4chan community had when I was younger and frequented it. Basically, and I’m paraphrasing:

Everyone here needs to grow up and understand that no post should ever be presumed to be true or legitimate. This is an anonymous forum. Assume that everything was written by a bot or a troll in the absence of proof that it wasn’t.

I think people put too much trust in social media precisely because they assume that there’s a real person behind every post. They assume that a face and a few photos gives an account legitimacy, despite the fact that it’s trivial to copy photos from a random account (2015/16 pro-Trump Facebook style) or just generate all of the content from scratch with AI (to avoid duplicate detection).

Trust itself is driver of misinformation. On social media, people should only fully trust posts made by people they know. That is the simplest and most comprehensive solution to the problem.