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- Big Tech Cuts Back In Struggle Over Falsehoods
Image credit: The New York Times, Noam Galai/Getty Images
‘Big Tech Cuts Back In Struggle Over Falsehoods’ is the headline of a worrying article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times this week. The tech layoffs in recent months have affected policy experts and content moderators in charge of handling misinformation. At YouTube, the team in charge of misinformation worldwide has only one person left.
I wouldn’t say the war is over, but I think we’ve lost key battles. I do think we, as a society, have lost the appetite to keep battling. And that means we will lose the war.
The same week this article appeared in the New York Times, Doyobi students embarked on a whodunnit quest designed to get learners to hone critical thinking skills and apply language skills to articulate their thought process as they work together to make sense of information. The quest runs over four weeks, with the following themes each week
Week 1 - Establishing perspectives / points of view
Week 2 - Investigating perspectives and reliability of sources
Week 3 - Understanding the effect of social media on spreading falsehoods
Week 4 - Learning how we can play an active role in countering the spread of online falsehoods
Every student received an investigator handbook in which they made the following pledges:
On a spreadsheet, Doyobi’s learning experience designers lay out the essential question, learning objectives and learning outcomes of the quest before getting into the nitty gritty of the quest narrative and mechanics.
My team at Doyobi spends hundreds of hours designing each quest to make it fun, engaging and educational. By ‘educational’, we specifically mean
English language skills like critical reading, listening, speaking and writing
Life skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and problem-solving
Multiliteracy skills e.g. media literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, environmental literacy
How we get students to practise writing during a quest
Multiliteracy skills, in particular, is hugely important to us because we believe kids need to know what is going on in the world around them and understand the role they play in combatting issues that threaten democracy, public health, equality, human rights, the environment etc.
Online falsehoods for example. According to researchers at Media Matters, Covid-19 misinformation is being spread on YouTube via Shorts, its service for minute-long videos. The researchers also found videos that promoted hateful, misogynistic and transphobic views, some of which featuring YouTubers who were barred from YouTube last year after violating its content policies.
Content moderation is good for business, and it is good for democracy. Companies are failing to do that because they seem to think they don’t have a big enough role to play, so they’re turning their back on it.”
At a time when giant tech companies are turning their back on trust and safety, now more than ever we need kids to learn how they can play an active role in countering the spread of online falsehood.
Sign your child up for a Doyobi trial today.
If you enjoyed this week’s issue, you may want to check out issue 46 of Education & Catastrophe ‘In The Age Of AI, Major In Being Human’.
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