Fighting Misinformation Online

On Tuesday, the Internet Archive joined Public Knowledge, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic from Berkeley Law to brief the Congressional Internet Caucus on efforts to combat misinformation online. Misinformation is a complex issue but one of the root causes is a lack of easy, reliable ways for Internet users to distinguish good information from bad, or authoritative sources from propaganda. The panel highlighted our recent work to weave books into Wikipedia articles, giving users the ability to dig deeper and fact check assertions in just one click.

We would like to thank the Congressional Internet Caucus Academy and Representative Anna Eshoo for sponsoring this conversation.

15 thoughts on “Fighting Misinformation Online

  1. Pingback: The Internet Archive’s massive repository of scanned books will help Wikipedia fight the disinformation wars | Daily Tips Magazine - Leading in News

  2. Nemo

    Thank you! It’s great to know that for once some lawmakers have heard some concrete experiences on how to actually make people wiser, rather than the usual moral panics demanding totalitarian policies.

      1. Nemo

        Yes, there’s a particular family of spam bots which post copy-paste comments in order to introduce links from the comment section to whatever website they’re promoting at the moment. On this blog they usually post either generic compliments or fragments of previous comments.

    1. D. Reiss

      Knowledge is power and knowledge is founded on truth. Truth needs defenders against those who would subject the Public to « truth decay ». (My father was a dentist, so pardon the pun). If there were no Machiavellian fear-mongering politicians or constituents, there would be no need for such defenders.

  3. NWL

    My comment is in regard to duplicate copies of some volumes (often shared with BHL etc.). Originally I thought of simply having them removed but then realised that others like me have saved the URL for one version and if that disappears then there is a lot of rechecking required on my part. So keep up the good, no excellent, work against misinformation but please consider my point

  4. anon

    It’s very much like Orwell’s 1984 when politicians and tech corporations together decide what information is “misinformation”, especially when Wikimedia, which is notorious for spreading misinformation, is involved.

  5. AngryMinnesotan

    Misinformation can be accidental, the problem we face is Disinformation – intentional and malicious.

    There is a very important difference.

  6. More

    @anon – don’t worry, Internet Archive only wants to burn the *bad* books. What could possibly go wrong?

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