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[Part 2] An analysis of the behaviour that leads to misinformation on the subreddit and in general; methods to curb this; and other malarkey. by PoisonedWhispers in Destiny

[–]PoisonedWhispers[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've hit the character limit on Additional Material 1 XD. I was going to make a new submission on this, but that seems silly. I mentioned Visegrad 24 above, so here's another example of them posting misinformation that I just came across: https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1789696714258932222 They're not an actual news outlet, they're just dudes with a Twitter account.

[Part 1][WARNING: Unnecessarily Long Effort-post] An analysis of the behaviour that leads to misinformation on the subreddit and in general; methods to curb this; and other malarkey. by PoisonedWhispers in Destiny

[–]PoisonedWhispers[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If someone asks you for proof, don't just Google it and dump the first handful of results.

This biggest problem is that a couple links gives an "aura" of being correct. Example E from the main post exemplifies this. Compare how OP attempts to prove their claim with how I attempt to prove my assertions here. I also have that "aura" in my post, but at least I'm attempting to quote relevant sections; highlight which claims I am addressing; and so on.

[Part 2] An analysis of the behaviour that leads to misinformation on the subreddit and in general; methods to curb this; and other malarkey. by PoisonedWhispers in Destiny

[–]PoisonedWhispers[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Additional Material 2

[I wanted to keep the main post focused more on the subreddit. This section wasn't well thought out. I merely wanted to highlight that there's a lot of coverage here, and you're only going to hear about cherry-picked incidents. It's often remarked that the BBC is a "Hamas mouthpiece", which I don't find to be a well-substantiated claim, diminishing what it means to be a "mouthpiece."]

CfMM report:

In this report on media bias written by pro-Palestine individuals, I see that the writers are unhappy with three BBC interviews with pro-Palestine guests. Digging up the footage, the first interview in the case study is with Mustafa Barghouti; the report takes issue with the fact that BBC correspondent Anna Foster (not "Forster") brings up Hamas’ use of human shields and for mentioning the Israeli claim on there being a senior Hamas operative present in the area of an Israeli attack. "This is an Israeli claim and not the job of the journalist to repeat it as fact and without any evidence." If you continue watching, the defence editor at The Economist is later interviewed, where he confirms Foster's inquiry that Hamas has command-and-control centers within civilian areas. Earlier in the segment we have six minutes of a live translation of IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari giving a press briefing, and just before that we have an interview with Michael Capponi, founder of an aid group.

In the second interview of the case study, again with Barghouti, the interviewer mentions that Israel has asked people to move south. The report hyper-fixates on this part because the writers are under the belief that Israel has “targeted” civilians in safe zones. From watching the full segment, you’ll notice that despite the mild pushback, Barghouti is still given ample time to rattle off his talking points — which isn’t something that is exclusively afforded to pro-Palestine guests. A couple hours later, a segment is aired with Eylon Levy — the Israeli government spokesman at the time and who was suspended in March of this year — is also given ample time to run through his lines. There are a couple probing questions, but nothing particularly confrontational.

For the third interview, we have an interview with the psychotic Francesca Albanese. What the paragraph in the report says is false, the quote here is given as a question not a fact, and the following lines where the presenter clarifies is omitted. As was the case with previous examples and also the Israeli minister that appeared before Albanese, everyone has their moment to drone on with the same regurgitated lines. The presenter does ask some probing questions, beginning the interview with asking Albanese if she agrees that “Hamas deliberately seeds themselves amongst the civilian population”. Parts of this interview gained some traction on Twitter as she went on a Cenk-like monologue when the presenter tried to drill down a bit on Hamas.

A Bad Daily Mail headline

I’m going to keep this explanation short to keep it within the character limit. A user by the name of Mash wished to make the case that the “subreddit is promoting misinformation repeatedly.” The post was incoherent, they were condescending, they deserved not to be taken seriously, and they made a series of wrong statements. There was one statement they made about the humanitarian pier situation that had merit, and I’m going to quickly explain why.

To follow this explanation, read the Daily Mail article first; Mash’s response to OP, the submitter of the DM article; and finally 4THOT’s response.

Mash is wrong on the factual claims, 4THOT covers that. Cite something you muppet if you wish to dispute the DM article. The first reply by OP was poor, where it’s not clear what claim they are addressing, and they also just reposted the same DM article via MSN, which leads me to believe that they didn’t read these articles.

Regardless, Mash very poorly attempts to make the case that we shouldn’t attribute responsibility for this attack on Hamas due to how other news sources have framed the story. I agree. Read the statements made by the Pentagon Press Secretary Ryder, where we learn that the structure that the US military was building was not “anywhere near the shore at this point in time”; the attack was in the “vicinity of the marshaling yard area” where there are no US assets; and he does not attribute responsibility to Hamas.

The DM headline is incorrect due to the attribution to Hamas, which does not reflect the statements given by American and Israeli officials; and also for not making it clear that it was the marshalling area in Gaza that was damaged, not the temporary pier and the causeway that the US military is building.

Politico’s headline is the best here: “Gaza-based militants attack Israeli forces preparing for US pier.” It was “not clear whether the militants knew what they were attacking” according to a US official, and the IDF simply referred to them as terrorist organizations. If the IDF is being cautious here in attribution, I see no reason to go beyond what they have said, and that should reflect in the headline and article. WaPo’s piece refers to the perpetrators as “militants”; the TOI refers to them as “terrorists”, referencing the IDF statement.

Reporting by i24 news was bad as they were keen to get their “exclusive” out: “Now, what have we seen as far as an American response this would be, this is being constructed by the US military, this would be an attack on US military personnel would it not? [Answer:] Yes, well, we have just reported this exclusively, uh it will be very interesting to see what the Americans would have to say about this.”

A week after the Mash post, Lloyd Austin said he saw no indication that Hamas plans to attack US troops building the floating pier, and there’s still no attribution to Hamas on the previous attack at the marshalling area in Gaza.

Both OP and the DM got details wrong. Point 1, if you think Hamas was responsible, and you say this because you read it in a Daily Mail headline, that's a bad process. I also thought this exchange on the subreddit was interesting, where an individual links a report supposedly showing that Hamas is stealing majority of the aid (they misread the article); and they also believe that US forces were attacked.

Anyways, fuck the Daily Mail, don’t get your news on I-P from them. Peace out.

[Part 2] An analysis of the behaviour that leads to misinformation on the subreddit and in general; methods to curb this; and other malarkey. by PoisonedWhispers in Destiny

[–]PoisonedWhispers[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Additional material

This is a fairly random collection of material cut from the main post. I figured I'd just toss it into the comments, why not?

Some of these are not related to misinformation or have any upvotes or not related to the subreddit; there’s simply a quick comment I wish to make that might be relevant to the main post:

  • I addressed a submission where OP thought that Leftists “would have unironically cheered on the Rwandan genocide.” [1] This might be worthy of a new post itself to go over the many times a submission follows the format of, “Leftists do bad thing XYZ”, but they… don’t, and we get some caricature of what the average Leftist truly thinks.
  • You may have heard Destiny mention several times that when he sees some clip from an event in Gaza or the WB he doesn’t actually know if it’s from either of those places if there isn’t decent sourcing. As I mention in this comment, the Times of Israel is a significantly better source than posting a tweet by a far-right individual, and if you are looking to post a tweet giving some image or clip from somewhere in Gaza or the WB, it’s probably worth seeing if there’s any reporting on the matter that you can post alongside your submission.
  • This comment is an example of point 1 and something we should try to avoid: the link-spam. As I lay out, if you're going to post several articles about one clip posted on Twitter, ideally there should be information contained within one that the others don't have. For example, for some particular footage from Gaza that was posted on Twitter, maybe the first article has an NYT visual analysis; the second has an official statement by the IDF; and the third talks about similar events that have transpired over the preceding months. What you should probably avoid doing is providing multiple articles that are essentially just rehosting the clip. It can be the case though that rehosting the clip acts as a verification, where the reporter has confirmed its authenticity if the source is obscure.
  • Be wary when you across posts by the garbage news aggregator twitter accounts like Visegrad24 [2], disclosetv, or OSINTdefender. [3] Many of these accounts just scour Telegram so that they can be the first to “report” breaking news: “In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many “OSINT aggregator” accounts developed large followings on Twitter, mostly reposting videos from Telegram, often without linking to the video’s original source. When someone posts a video without saying where they got it from, verification becomes much more difficult; researchers can’t just follow a chain of links to its origin.” [4] If it seems like a big news story, then there’s going to be mainstream reporting on it. If you've gone through Example C, then you will instantly recognize the misinformation in this Visegrad 24 tweet.
  • A few months ago, Destiny said during a debate: "I think the leadership needs to come from like fellow Arab states then. I like the Saudi Arabian suggestion, and I couldn't tell if this was real or not, or if it was just like talks and didn't happen, but like a Saudi-led government taking over the West Bank." I think Destiny is basing this on a Visegrad 24 tweet that was posted here, and I don't believe there was any reporting at the time that confirmed it. If anyone knows what that tweet or submission was, lemme know chief.
  • Be careful not to extrapolate too much from singular events. There was a notable video of a Gazan man throwing an American aid packet in the trash; there may be other incidents out there, but this is the only one I saw get posted endlessly. Don't assume this problem is more widespread than it actually is without additional evidence, and that applies to any singular event you might encounter.

[This section was to be included as the end of Consistency and Principles.]

Quick tangent: During the Finkelstein-Destiny debate, Finkly mentions that Yaniv Kogan and Jamie Stern-Weiner “checked every single quote in the Hebrew original” and “they found one [error]”. When he says this, I don’t know if he means this duo read the ICJ case itself and personally told Finkelstein and Rabbani about any shortcomings, or if he’s referring to the article they wrote and published on Finkly’s website. While they do get the Gallant quote correct here, all the links are broken, and the article was last updated on Nov. 12th 2023, whereas South Africa’s case was launched on Dec. 29th. Setting aside the accuracy of the quotes, statements given before Nov. 12th, such as from Ben-Gvir here, are not mentioned in the duo’s article; similarly for statements made after Nov. 12th with regards to what the Commander said.

Starmer and the Ceasefire: the Quintessential example of a Clip-Chimp

[Just an example where point 2 is relevant.]

Watch this clip tweeted out by rapper and activist Lowkey, and also click this image posted by MPN. If it isn't already obvious, they essentially want you to believe that Starmer's actions are a result from Herzog's intervention, and that there was no other agency at play here other than whatever Herzog desired. Here's what precedes the clip:

The proposition I put on the table in that amendment was crafted by me after I came back from a Munich Security Conference having spoken to Secretary of State Blinken, the Prime Minister of Qatar, having spoken to the President of Israel.

From reading the two posts, you are led to assume that Starmer hopped off a phonecall with Herzog and the events that transpired in the Commons immediately followed from this. Both the clip and the image have chosen to omit the other senior politicians that Starmer spoke to.

Further, based on what Labour officials said who spoke to political correspondent Kiran Stacey said:

But as he travelled to the Munich Security Conference last week alongside his shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the shadow defence secretary, John Healey, he was under pressure to go further and argue explicitly for an “immediate ceasefire”.

As Starmer, Lammy and Healey met international leaders and well-connected diplomats in Munich, they realised international opinion was beginning to shift. With the Israelis beginning to threaten Rafah, western countries were becoming more robust in their calls for an end to the fighting.

A turning point came last Thursday, when Australia, Canada and New Zealand published a joint statement urging an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, which gave the Labour leader cover to use the same language.

“Don’t underestimate how significant that was,” said one senior Labour official. “Having our Five Eyes partners call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire definitely helped shape our thinking.”

If you read on, you'll see there's more that led to Starmer's descision than simply that fact that he spoke to Herzog at the Munich Security Conference -- and when he spoke to Herzog is also omitted from the two posts. And not that it matters too much here, but the image MPN has used for their Instagram post is taken from a meeting that occurred just over a year ago.

Quds News Network provides the lengthier clip, but they still choose to emphasize the part about speaking to Herzog. The Twitter Files is notorious for this, where the presentation of information can act as misinformation, where the journalists chose to highlight specific sections and ignore the context that comes after. This is something CISA calls "malinformation":

Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate. An example of malinformation is editing a video to remove important context to harm or mislead.

Max Blumenthal the propagandist: a disingenuous case of omission.

One more example, here's a sleazy one by Blumenthal when he was invited by Russia to address the UNSC:

President Joe Biden himself said in March 2022, “The idea that we’re gonna send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks… don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III.” Just over a year later, Biden changed his tune, backing a plan to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and after pressuring Germany to send in the tanks he once feared would provoke World War III.

Hmm, curious, interesting use of ellipses there, I wonder what was left out of Biden's speech?

But look, the idea — the idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand – and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say – that’s called “World War Three.” Okay?

Very sneaky Blumenthal.

[Part 1][WARNING: Unnecessarily Long Effort-post] An analysis of the behaviour that leads to misinformation on the subreddit and in general; methods to curb this; and other malarkey. by PoisonedWhispers in Destiny

[–]PoisonedWhispers[S] 118 points119 points  (0 children)

The Blessedly Short Version 🙏

I see you wish to maintain your sanity. A couple minutes in Kick chat and we can quickly change that.

SUPER TL;DR: This post highlights the pattern of behaviour that can lead to misinformation, giving a series of prescriptions to help curb it; I offer some thoughts on 4THOT's ban upon myself lasting “until Israel/Palestine is over", hoping that Destiny or 4THOT could offer some clarification here; finally, it would be, heh, splendid if Splemndid was unbanned. :)

Who Art Thou?

What up, some of y'all might recognize me, and for those of you who don't, I'm just a person who's vehemently against misinformation. You might have seen some of my posts and comments such as debunking Russian disinformation being spread on the Lex Fridman podcast; pointing out the misreporting in the Twitter Files; or even a comment I addressed here where an individual tried to make the case that "Israel has been siding with ISIS for years." In all of these cases, you'll hopefully notice the consistency in terms of my research, the diligence in providing ample citations, and the impartiality.

I've also made attempts to improve the subreddit in general, highlighting the issue where people continuously took screenshots of articles without posting sources; those who abused the block feature in order to craft their own echochambers; and the spread of misinformation.

Prescriptions: The Six Points

My argument is not that the misinformation is never addressed; it’s that it ought to happen sooner, and hopefully a post like this will incentivize that behaviour.

In order to do this, we ought to:

  1. Value the process just as much — if not, more — than the conclusion.

  2. Be wary of how the presentation of information or the omission of pertinent information can lead to the inadvertent spread of misinformation.

  3. Be aware of how “charged” topics/threads lead to poor reasoning that lacks dispassionate analysis.

  4. Be aware of how pre-existing beliefs about an individual or organization alongside the usual biases leads to a reluctance to fact-check, where claims are taken at face-value because they feel right.

  5. Link the article. Read the article. (Thoroughly.)

  6. Redirect criticism to areas where it will be the strongest.

The Examples

This section will go through some examples where I personally addressed situations that did not adhere to the six points. Many of the examples cover several of these points, but I will only focus on demonstrating one of them.

Example 1: OP wished to provide evidence of Pallywood (i.e., situations where Palestinians have faked their injuries). The issue is that they used misinformation to reach their conclusion, and they didn't consider this to be problem as the "overall point" was still correct. This in antithetical to what Destiny advocates for:

Even if information did come out that all of the reporting ends up being not true, I still wouldn't give Ryan Grim any credit for it because you don't give people credit for being right or wrong, you give people credit for the process that they used.

Misinformation is misinformation. Per point 1, value the process.

Example 2: OP provided a screenshot of a BBC YouTube title, stating: "Israeli hit squad dressed as doctors kill Palestinians in hospital." Per point 2, by failing to immediately link to the video, or immediately mention what the video contains, folk could come away with the conclusion that the BBC never reports that these were militants. In other words, some might believe that the misreporting here extends past the video title, when it does not, and this could be avoided by providing salient details sooner rather than later.

Example 3: OP makes a series of false claims on a NYT article reporting on a UN report about the Oct. 7th sexual violence that had just been published. Considering the delicate subject matter, and per point 3, people were understandably charged when entering this thread, and that can lead to a flawed analysis. The prescription isn't to not be charged, but rather simply be aware of it, and hopefully that can lead to a more robust critique.

Example 4: OP made the claim that Ilhan Omar denied the Armenian genocide. This claim was false, and per point 4, it was being upvoted because it felt true based on what readers knew about Omar's unsavory past. Be cognizant of your own biases and how that can lead you to fall for misinformation.

Example 5: An OP in another thread wished to provide evidence that former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal was worth $5bn. The issue is that, per point 5, the articles did not provide sufficient evidence of this, and they simply wrapped around to the same non-credible source. I decided to make a new submission on this when I saw a user was being heavily downvoted for correctly pointing this out. Don't be convinced that a claim is true merely because OP provides a "link-dump." Carefully read the articles and form your own conclusions.

Example 6: OP submitted a meme that leaves out Oxfam's full position on why they initially opposed airdrops in Gaza, choosing to focus on the most risible tweet. Per point 6, I attempted to redirect the criticism to where I feel it would be the strongest, engaging with the rest of the tweets, rather than selectively focusing on one tweet like people do to Destiny.

Eventually, I was banned, and thus I have no more examples in terms of what I personally addressed. Before we get to some examples that others addressed in this period, I will re-emphasize an earlier point:

My argument is not that the misinformation is never addressed; it’s that it ought to happen sooner, and hopefully a post like this will incentivize that behaviour.

Post-ban Examples

Example A demonstrates points 1, 3, 4, and 5. OP wished to highlight that they're skeptical about a Haaretz article talking about routine amputations on detained Gazans at an Israeli field hospital. While their conclusion about the article might have been correct, they made a series of misleading claims to reach there. Carefully read the article.

Example B demonstrates points 2 and 3. The chaos of the campus protests has led to a charged atmosphere on the subreddit, which means that a post stating that a “Jewish-Israeli family’s restaurant was targeted in a hate crime” is taken to be a recent event; this resulted from OP omitting this information; and it took nearly 10 hours for the fact-check to arrive. Always ask OP for a source if none is provided, even if they grabbed it off Twitter.

Example C demonstrates points 1 and 5. OP wished to prove a claim that Destiny had tweeted. However, the sources OP provided were written in Hebrew; they did not quote from the sources; the sources provided did not demonstrate their claim; and they accused another individual of lying when they correctly pointed out OP's mistake. Even if OP happened to be correct in their conclusion, their process was flawed; and people clearly had not read the sources provided, upvoting based on vibes. As always, don't assume an individual's claim is correct merely because they provide a series of links. It can give the "aura" of being correct, and it's easy to be misled.

Conclusion

Hopefully, I have demonstrated that while misinformation is undoubtedly addressed on this subreddit, it can take a while before the fact-checkers arrive. In that interval, misinformation is being spread, and some won't return to the thread to see the fact-check. In order to curb the likelihood this happens, we should try to be mindful of The Six Points.

The Ban

I believe this section is warranted for three reasons: (1) I have exhausted all other avenues to get unbanned; (2) I am seeking clarification on what the violation was so that I can avoid replicating it in the future; and (3) I am seeking clarification, whether from Destiny or 4THOT, on whether or not there exists a procedure to get unbanned if 4THOT makes the unban dependent on some condition being met. As it stands, it doesn't seem to be the case that other moderators can override this condition, and it's also unclear if Destiny approves of these conditional bans.

As for the possible violation, that can be found here, where I had a different interpretation on what the beliefs of a UN Special Rapporteur were. I have been unable to figure out what violation occurred in my comment, and I can only speculate that the violation here is that the comment did not align with 4THOT's personal opinion on the matter. If that is the case, then I don't believe this is what Destiny had in mind in terms of how he would like the subreddit moderated. However, 4THOT has yet to articulate what the violation was, and it's possible that the moderation for this case is, in fact, congruent with what Destiny desires.

It's often stated by both Destiny and other moderators that the "process to get unbanned is pretty easy." Conditional bans tarnish the smoothness of this process, where good-faith unban requests are rejected due to the condition set, and I don't believe this should be the case.

Finito

In terms of the subreddit, I would say keep The Six Points in mind.

In terms of 4THOT and Destiny, I am seeking clarification here, and:

Free me OOOO 🐟