I recently sat down for a chat with disinformation expert Ricardo Vásquez Dazarola.
Here are my main takeaways from our conversation:
Disinformation is intentional (e.g. political influence campaigns) while misinformation is false information, but without any intention of harm.
Disinformation is “lawful, but awful”, whereas hate speech is illegal in many countries. Each jurisdiction has a different threshold and understanding of what constitutes illegal speech (yet social media’s moderation policies are typically based on the American standard).
Literacy campaigns and education is the best way for a society to absorb disinformation. In Finland and Estonia, children are taught about disinformation from a young age to mitigate the impacts of Russian propaganda campaigns.
Humans have always lied and spread false information, but social media and AI exacerbate the issues. Laws cannot regulate ‘the truthfulness’ of what people say online or in private messages. What they can do is regulating how information is distributed. For example, Brazil adopted a law that said messaging apps such as WhatsApp had to be designed in such a way that you cannot share the same message with more than three people during elections.
The law should address technology on the level of its design, contrary to regulating its impacts which are many and often unknown.
The role of social media platforms is not to screen what is true and what is important. The role of social media is to provide users with the right tools, so they can easily screen relevant information for themselves. Currently, social media platforms are intentionally making it hard to do so, because they want to increase engagement as much as possible.
Social media platforms should be transparent about deepfakes and who sponsors political advertisement ( requirements under EU law).
As of now, social media is best used for stupid things, not as a reliable source of news.
