Who decides what is disinformation? As the last few years have shown the 'disinformation' has been more truthful than the 'official' lies.

Exactly!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65708746

But anyone saying it *must* be a lab leak, or a CIA plot is peddling disinformation.

True, the CIA has never done anything even slightly illegal before!

People have an inherent distrust of any organisation that can audit itself. The CCP (well known for disinformation) very quickly came out with the wet market theory and along with the WHO (who peddled a fair amount of disinformation in the early days of covid) were busy defending their paymasters.

We were basically thrown back to the pre-Galilean scientific method of 'it is this way because we say it is and questioning it is heresy'.

"People have an inherent distrust of any organisation that can audit itself"

It's not being able to audit itself that's the problem. It's preventing independent audits that should earn mistrust.

You completely missed Graemes point.

If a new person moves into the area and someone says "Oh, he's black, he's probably a murderer".

If it turns out that the new guy *IS* a murderer, that doesn't vindicate the racist.

Baseless misinformation is misinformation whatever the outcome.

Isn't that just someone's opinion? If they think it *must* be a lab leak, they are entitled to that opinion?

If they start quoting statistics and "facts" which are just made up, that's disinformation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65708746"

Yeah, at the very beginning of the article, Prof Gao says: "You can always suspect anything. That's science. Don't rule out anything."

That's science. You'll rarely hear a scientist say "that's impossible". If pushed, they may say something is improbable or even highly improbably. So no, implying as you do that this article is showing the lab leak theory is likely is not the case It's a possibility, which evidence and facts may either show to be true or show to be very unlikely.

Sure, you are one who peddles disinformation here constantly...

@Casca

"Sure, you are one who peddles disinformation here constantly..."

Guessing I have upset you at some point. Diddums

Just because he says things you don't like, that doesn't make it disinformation.

"Brexit has happened and the apocalypse didnt happen."

That will piss off a lot of remoaners, but it's true isn't it? Or at least arguable.

I only scanned the first page, but didn't spot any obvious misinformation.

And that's the whole problem, isn't it? Who gets to decide? If it's people like you, then it just becomes censorship, which then leads inevitably to Very Bad Things.

Remoaners... Gosh, fresh and original!

It's just people who harp on about how terrible Brexit has been. It's a perfectly good word.

I'm not sure what the word is for Brexiteers who also harp on, and are equally insufferable.

Now there's an example (Brexit) where there was an abundance of disinformation ON BOTH SIDES.

I must admit, I don't find the EU more attractive when they say that about their "voluntary" agreement "you can run but you can't hide". Sounds like a Mafia threat.

weird, a lot of brexshitters are pretending "their" brexshit didn't happen.

And the food price apocalypse has happened, or is it ok over there in russia?

and if it's people like you deciding we get a steaming pile of shit fed to us as truth with a side of racism

Pretty much every 'information' is disinformation of some sort. Even a list of stated facts, each of which is perfectly true, can be disinformative if other true and relevant facts are omitted, or without relevant context. Ideally people can come up with their own index of how accurate any information is, and it's always likely to be a shade of grey rather than black or white. In the end I would settle for a "do not allow propagation of blatant lies" policy, which is at least a bit more workable.

But in practice it's very much more complicated. For example (taking the covid source article)

Each of "covid definitely came from the seafood market" and "covid definitely came from the lab" is something that might be flagged but not banned. But this is also the type of article that, when coming from more authoritative sources is more accepted, even if it is wrong.

Each of "covid likely came from the seafood market" and "covid likely came from the lab" is completely fair comment, especially if supplying reasons and arguments. But it's also the type of article that can be weasel-worded into strongly implying something while having enough CYA-bull for deniability

"covid is a CIA plot" or "covid vaccines contain mind-controlling nanobots from supervillain bill gates" range from outright insane to defamatory, and most likely the type of statements that could be banned. But these are also statements of low disinformation because exactly because they are spouting outright bollocks, will likely be outright laughed off by most.

The most dangerous disinformation is that which mixes in their lies with dollops of truth and deliberately muddy the issues.

A bit like stating:

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China"

Was that a poorly worded statement by the WHO based on only a small amount of data or was that ass-covering disinformation from the CCP?

How about 'covid vaccines do not change women's menstrual cycles'?

Disinformation is simply whatever doesn't fit the officially-approved narrative at that particular time.

It depends upon opinion or fact. There are two types:

Type (A): If the discussion is simply regarding opinion - i.e: "our political agenda serves purposes better than yours" - then certainly "disinformation" is only in the eye of the beholder.

Type (B): If the discussion is regarding FACT - i.e.: "global water levels are rising" - then "disinformation" is either LIE or a re-iteration of the facts.

No if's, and's, or but's. Regardless of people trying to inject their opinions into those facts in an attempt to change to discussion back to type (A), which only serves their agendas. Facts have no agendas, they exist outside the realm of human acceptance; they exist regardless if the humans acknowledge them or not. Jupiter exists, and provably so, even if you individually choose not to believe that - it only makes you foolish. "Disinformation", if played against provable physical facts, isn't "disinformation", it is a LIE and the spineless people who use the term "disinformation" so as to avoid insulting the ignorant need to STOP USING THE WORD.

I read your comment thinking "who on this forum would write such a stupid thing", then read your handle, and it all made sense.

You know full well what counts as absolute bullshit that gets spouted by idiots and those with an agenda to brainwash idiots. You do it often yourself.

“ Twitter is now considered a VLOP ("Very Large Online Platform")”

In fairness, Phony Stark has a plan to deal with that - and Twitter is shrinking every day.

Whatever are the Politions going to say to the electorate, comes Election Day. Apropos the old saying, that you can tell when a Polititian is lying, by observing whether or not he has his mouth open.

You are sassuming that there is a direct correlation between lies and 'disinformation'! There isn't - disinformation is whatever doesn't fit the narrative (often, it will be true). Lies are fine so long as they fit the narrative, as the government and media have demonstrated so well over the past few years.

Extra upvote awarded for 2 failed attempts to spell politishun, whoops I meant pollytitsion.

The twit calling for the EU to be "abolished".

Personally I'd much prefer that to happen to twitter.

From a hard-lib viewpoint (which I do not share): voluntary industry code of conduct something-or-others usually only exist to prevent actual enforceable legislation. Since the Digital Services Act will come anyway, why bother anymore?

A lot of things will be problematic as difference of opinion could easily be regarded as disinformation if an opinion is in the minority.

e.g.

Some people say Israel is a genocidal apartheid state

Some people say the Palestinians are terrorists and deserve all they get.

Some people say trans women are men.

Some people say trans women are women.

Some people say Philip Schofield is a grooming nonce

Some people say Philip Schofield has been unfairly vilified.

Some people say Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster.

Some people say Brexit has been great.

Some people think Tesla cars are of low build quality & massively over hyped.

Some people wish their Tesla had a convenient orifice / appendage (delete as appropriate for gender / sexual preferences) as then they could show their love physically.

Very few things will be provably correct or incorrect - many things are opinion based, in other areas there may well not be enough "hard facts" to be sure e.g. people mentioned the "source" of COVID - very unlikely we will ever know for sure if it was food markets or lab screw up or some other cause(s) .

.. Even when there seem to be "hard facts" things may change, e.g. in science the latest and greatest theory in a particular area often renders some previous "truths" incorrect, and then further in the future that theory is shown to be flawed / incomplete. e.g. centuries ago physiognomy was accepted by many, with zero evidence (the idea that someone's physical appearance reflected their personality to an extent, so someone could have e.g. a "criminal look")

Although these days we assume things are a lot more rational & scientific there's still lots of things that are generally accepted by many without being scientifically testable and "provable" (things are difficult once lots of complexity is involved & often rapidly become impossible to prove, especially in the area of "social sciences" e.g. economics is basically a shouting match of competing theories all using over simplistic models that are doomed to failure when applied to the complexities of the "real world")

A few bits of BS are obviously easily disproved, a microscope and access to some vials of COVID vaccine would show no microchips in the vaccine (but the conspiracy theorists would still say "that's because Bill Gates is sneaky & only puts the chips in a small proportion of the vaccines, your samples just happened to be clean, but chips are out there")

.. but most things cannot readily be "proven" as disinformation, but disinformation legislation could lead to a scenario of stifling dissenting voices.