Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:<p>If anyone wants to see the full article but is paywalled, lemme know & i'll post it in full later. For now though i'm only extracting quotes from it, then eviscerating them.</p><p><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/caught-in-a-storm-of-misinformation-getting-the-right-info-is-a-disaster-20250311-p5liqo.html?ref=rss" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">smh.com.au/national/caught-in-</span><span class="invisible">a-storm-of-misinformation-getting-the-right-info-is-a-disaster-20250311-p5liqo.html?ref=rss</span></a></p><blockquote><p>As a South East Queensland resident waiting for Alfred to cross the coast, my <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/algorithm" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>algorithm</span></a> flooded me with relentless updates on the cyclone – from everyone, for days. There was no hierarchy to what I saw. Media outlets, local government, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), independent weather accounts, influencers catastrophising or downplaying events, TikTokers filming exploding powerlines and Brisbane residents packing emergency kits under sunny skies – all competing for attention with equal weight.</p></blockquote><p>You moron. you blithering idiot. You pathetic fool. I have no sympathy for you. It is so well known nowadays that all the closed-source for-profit algorithmic cesspit-media are garbage dispensers. No sane peep should still be using them. If you <em>do</em> still choose to use them, you have no right to then moan about their shitness, given that is their core mission. You forfeit any right to moan, once you choose to continue using them, given their shitness is the point, & this is widely known.</p><blockquote><p>Everyone was tracking Alfred. Everyone had an opinion on its path. But with each update, I was no more informed.</p></blockquote><p>Then stop using <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/CesspitMedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CesspitMedia</span></a> ffs, & just keep reloading reputable sites like the <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/BoM" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BoM</span></a>. </p><blockquote><p>On Friday, someone in my local community group posted a map showing the cyclone’s eye passing directly through my suburb. Like anyone could know that. It was confusing. Scary. Ultimately, the information rollercoaster was more intense than my cyclone experience.</p></blockquote><p>Fuckwit 🙄🤦♀️</p><blockquote><p>But social media doesn’t reward measured warnings. The worst-case scenario always leads because alarmism feeds the algorithm. Misinformation, disinformation and opinion overload result in people tuning out when they need to stay well-informed.</p></blockquote><p>What, you're <em>still</em> moaning? Cretin!</p><blockquote><p>The lack of hierarchy in information isn’t just frustrating – it’s dangerous. People caught in LA’s January wildfires struggled to get reliable emergency advice because misinformation ran rampant online, even fanned by the US president.</p></blockquote><p>Cry me a river ffs. If you deliberately choose to use shit platforms, with shit peeps, then what else do you expect? Idiot. </p><blockquote><p>It was rife during Cyclone Alfred too: a fake video claiming to be footage of Brisbane enduring 220km/h winds on March 5 before the cyclone hit the city, multiple images of the radar claiming to be evidence Alfred was engineered by humans!</p></blockquote><p>Not in the <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/fediverse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>fediverse</span></a>! Not on the <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/BoM" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BoM</span></a>! Not in <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/GuardianAustralia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GuardianAustralia</span></a> & the <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ABC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ABC</span></a>! You fool. </p><blockquote><p>We are lucky in Australia to have some of the best-resourced agencies in the world – like the BoM and SES – providing expert emergency information for an increasingly unpredictable climate. We need to elevate informed voices in an emergency, not compete with them.</p></blockquote><p>Hypocrite! Raging hypocrite! You know of such trustworthy sources yet voluntarily <em>chose</em> to use cesspit-media? Moron. </p><blockquote><p>After Alfred was downgraded, the BOM Radar Fan Club Facebook group (660,000 members) shared a post from an account called The Weather with a dramatic warning that it might “reintensify” into a major cyclone before hitting Brisbane. Technically possible – but extremely unlikely, according to the BoM. Unfortunately, that expert detail was buried because hysteria grows audiences.</p></blockquote><p><em>Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!</em> 😡🖕</p><blockquote><p>Social media platforms need to take some responsibility too and enforce a hierarchy into people’s feeds so that information from trusted sources gets to the people who need it.</p></blockquote><p>JFC, grow a brain, grow a spine! Cesspit-media is never gonna behave responsibly, coz that's not their credo, not their business plan. Furthermore, they're not based in Straya, so are untouchable by parochial Strayan laws, no matter how hard our impotent duplicitous pollies beat their chests & declare otherwise. The only power you have is to use your brain, exercise your morality, recognise the reality, & so dump <strong><em>all</em></strong> cesspit-media... & ffs, also stop paying any attention to that most B-Ark of concepts, "Influencers" 🤢🤮. Use the fediverse, you dolt. </p><blockquote><p>AI is making its insidious entry. We don’t know what impact AI will have on how we receive our news and, like Alfred, it’s impossible to predict.</p></blockquote><p>Oh really? Here's what we know already. AI LLMs are predicated on the largest theft of private intellectual property in the history of humans, so on ethical grounds alone should be abandoned. Secondly, more pragmatically, they have unsolvable <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/hallucination" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>hallucination</span></a> problems, such that nothing they generate can be trusted unless independently verified by actual humans skilled in the subject area.</p>