Rumor Mills
Feb. 2nd, 2004 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aA couple of years ago, people were really starting to hype the power of the Internet as a populist medium for the distribution of information. In the last week or two, however, I've started to wonder how much it's a force for good and how much a force for evil.
Last week I was amazed by how fast the Dean-privacy story wooshed through LJ, jumping from friends' list to friends list. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a collection of only almost truths that appears to have been maleovolently spread.
Today I again saw the telephone game in action, creating information that was just as incorrect as the Dean story last week even though there was no maleovolent seed. Site #1 published an unreleased supplement for an old game. Site #2 linked in to Site #1, but also went to the game's original publisher, incorrectly read an old press release from the publisher, and thus stated the game would be reprinted this June (apparently based on the fact that they'd made an announcement _last_ June that they were planning a reprint at some point). Site #3 then linked to Site #1 and Site #2 and stated the new reprint date as an absolute fact and even put it in their upcoming releases section.
Sigh.
It all reminds me, in addition, of the increasingly problems that the Survivor sites online are facing. Since Survivor #5 (Marquesas) or #6 (The Amazon) an increasing amount of spoiler information on Survivor seasons has been leaking to the 'net, with the result being that big chunks of the show are being spoiled beforehand. People who don't want spoiler info (like me) are finding that the communities that we can access are growing smaller and smaller in number because so many are contaminated. And the good and bad information mixes so freely that it's become impossible to know what to trust and what not to.
Is this a preview of the future for the Internet, where all information becomes useless, because there's so much of it, and much is maliciously untrustworthy or else just the result of good intentions gone bad?
Last week I was amazed by how fast the Dean-privacy story wooshed through LJ, jumping from friends' list to friends list. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a collection of only almost truths that appears to have been maleovolently spread.
Today I again saw the telephone game in action, creating information that was just as incorrect as the Dean story last week even though there was no maleovolent seed. Site #1 published an unreleased supplement for an old game. Site #2 linked in to Site #1, but also went to the game's original publisher, incorrectly read an old press release from the publisher, and thus stated the game would be reprinted this June (apparently based on the fact that they'd made an announcement _last_ June that they were planning a reprint at some point). Site #3 then linked to Site #1 and Site #2 and stated the new reprint date as an absolute fact and even put it in their upcoming releases section.
Sigh.
It all reminds me, in addition, of the increasingly problems that the Survivor sites online are facing. Since Survivor #5 (Marquesas) or #6 (The Amazon) an increasing amount of spoiler information on Survivor seasons has been leaking to the 'net, with the result being that big chunks of the show are being spoiled beforehand. People who don't want spoiler info (like me) are finding that the communities that we can access are growing smaller and smaller in number because so many are contaminated. And the good and bad information mixes so freely that it's become impossible to know what to trust and what not to.
Is this a preview of the future for the Internet, where all information becomes useless, because there's so much of it, and much is maliciously untrustworthy or else just the result of good intentions gone bad?
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 04:16 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-02 06:12 pm (UTC)I posted the info then posted a correction just like you.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-02 07:44 pm (UTC)::nod::
cool.. glad you know it was not intentional, similar to yours.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 11:17 pm (UTC)The thing is...
Yes, it's true that misinformation can spread faster than lightning on the net. I've become very cynical about the press, whom I used to trust more. Reading Google News can be a frightening experience as you can instantly see the same poorly researched crap syndicated to dozens of papers across the company (good old media consolidation!)
But as the web has given us junk, it's also given us powerful tools for cutting through the murk. For example, that Dean story... I believe it was debunked by someone who found a transcript of Dean's actual remarks. Where'd they find it? On Carnegie Mellon's website!
Last week somebody sent me a copy of an essay called something like "A Japanese Perspective on the Palestinians" and innocently asked me "Is this a hoax?" Two seconds of reading it told me the author was a raving racist nutjob. Two minutes of searching on the Internet revealed that the dude wasn't Japanese. But for some reason (the essay was prefaced with the comment "This letter written by someone with no vested interest in either side really nails it...") all the people who'd been sent this piece of trash so far had simply taken it at face value.
Google is definitely a big help, but even more than that, I think we all have to learn to "interrogate" the information that gets thrown at us all the time. "Who sent you? Who wrote you? What were their motives? What do they have to gain?"
Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 11:36 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-03 02:54 pm (UTC)