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Feasibility of enforcing transparency of post credibility on social media sites
Clearly a current topic of contention in social media is “fact-checking” of posts by the platforms. While fact checking is important I agree that it may not necessarily be up to the platform to have to police what people are posting (unless it clearly violates post guidelines).
What if instead of making the platforms police misinformation, we helped make it easier for individuals to do it themselves?
I will admit that I am not a social media professional, but figured that your opinions must be the most valuable in this situation. Many people are dissatisfied with the rampant spread of harmful misinformation. I am curious what solutions may be floating around, and am hoping to start a conversation to catalyze a feasible fix.
As an individual creates each post, there could be a prompt for “Source: ”, which requires a link (or multiple links, any of which could be verified to be related to the post) to be entered to provide post viewers with the source material, to be force-listed at the bottom of each post. This source box could be left blank, at which the post has a small marker at the top reading “No credible source”, or an option to select a “Opinion” tag for your post. This would help readers to differentiate credible information from potential misinformation or opinions treated as facts; while guiding those who post to verify their statements before posting.
What would be the possibility of making something like this operational? For those who work for social media sites, do you think it would make your jobs too cumbersome?
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1 Reply
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> there could be a prompt for “Source: ”, which requires a link (or multiple links, any of which could be verified to be related to the post) to be entered to provide post viewers with the source material, to be force-listed at the bottom of each post.
This is just adding another step: there are plenty of websites spreading fake news and misinterpreting legitimate data, so if I add a fake news website as a source it doesn’t fix anything and it might even legitimize some rumors by citing the “source”
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