This is literally a plot line from Metal Gear Solid 2 made real. I will quote below:<p>Colonel : Raiden, you seem to think that our plan is one of censorship.<p>Raiden : Are you telling me it's not!?<p>Rose : You're being silly! What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context.<p>Raiden : Create context?<p>Colonel : The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you.<p>......[ Skipping ahead a bit, the game is very verbose. ]<p>Raiden : And you think you're qualified to decide what's necessary and not?<p>Colonel : Absolutely. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations?<p>Rose : That's what it means to create context.
This seems like a bad thing overall, even though the intentions seem very good.<p>From the offset Twitter is collaborating with two entities, entities who themselves may promote the very sort of content and situation Twitter is trying to avoid with this post. That aside-<p>The very idea of a reliable source is dependent on the situation and subject matter at hand. Given the lack of consensus in the media or among so-called experts to begin with I’m not sure how much this will do other than reinforce the notion of a correct opinion, which you can rephrase as propaganda depending on your inclination.<p>No matter how many sources or information you have to prove your point, it seems what’s considered misinformation is often a matter of opinion.<p>A perfect example of this might be:<p>“People vaccinated with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine still die from the delta variant. Therefore I do not believe it’s worth getting the vaccine.”<p>Perhaps it’s true that there exists people who are vaccinated who still die. Perhaps their opinion is indeed that it’s not worth it. Is the above quote misleading or misinformation?<p>——<p>Personally I wish Twitter would take a political position based on whatever they believe to be true and just flag things they disagree with, rather than continue with the guise of stopping misinformation which without a perfect understanding of truth is likely to be an equally counterproductive action. So in the above example they could just say “for now we will flag all posts that discourage vaccinations as we believe it’s best for you to be vaccinated”