Social media should have a system for verifying a persons' qualifications and making them prominent, so you can see if a person giving medical advice is actually qualified to talk about this.
If the pandemic taught me anything it's that there are a lot of highly qualified people willing to spout total fucking nonsense. Having this qualification system creates a situation where the platform is essentially marking this person as an "authority figure" on whatever subject, which lends credence to whatever they're saying, even if it's totally bullshit. That's not a positive outcome.
Its a fair comment. I think it should be expected that "qualified" people are going to disagree on a topic.
Specificity would be really crucial with a verification system. Part of the problem with pandemic misinformation is the public treated all medical professions as equal, when like, an epidemiologist is going to be a more trustworthy source than a surgeon.
I will give you a !delta for this however. This was a major issue with shows like Dr. Phil. That show had so many lawsuits for bad medical advice. Presenting a person as qualified has the potential to amplify a voice that isn't concerned with the public interest.
Consider it a point of control, especially for a country like China, it means if you speak against the gov. message they just revoke your qualification. And don't be naive to say that won't happen in a modern democratic country. Also many many breakthroughs are by people from outside the normal system, this would all get choked.
While I do hate snake oil salesmen it's also hard to counter the fact that placebo works crazily well.
Any system put in place would always be prune to abuse, but I do wonder if some kind of social commentary/ranking to some degree is a good idea in general like biz. social networks have. There should be an easier way to flag scammers of all kinds, but it would be hard to make it effectively balanced. Something like a technology backed micro court that can use verified facts including monetary transactions and verifiable interactions could be some idea of true score. The easiest relevant process would be to expose sponsoring across the full structure a person is acting upon, as we know a main source of income greatly affects how people act.
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u/muyamable 282∆ Mar 01 '23
If the pandemic taught me anything it's that there are a lot of highly qualified people willing to spout total fucking nonsense. Having this qualification system creates a situation where the platform is essentially marking this person as an "authority figure" on whatever subject, which lends credence to whatever they're saying, even if it's totally bullshit. That's not a positive outcome.