Internet fuels quacks and fools so should it be restricted?

Internet

In the age of the Internet one of the greatest problems is the fact misinformation spreads, even as science and knowledge increases. Should it therefore be restricted?

Some folks say it should because lies can hurt the community. In this case the community is more than a town or a block or two. It's all of us who can find ourselves at the center of conflicts we did not create but must live with because of quacks and fools. At least that is what some people say, but does that mean the Internet needs monitoring by the governments of the world?

Professionals as well as ordinary people wonder how the Internet in its evolution may fuel misinformation and the question is asked often by people who worry how it can spread and what risks it can create, as the question posed by people like Brian Leatherman: “Should the federal government be allowed to regulate and restrict information on the Internet?” This study essay asks the question and reports the results of a Rasmussen poll in 2011 that 49% of the American people at the time believe the Internet should be restricted.

The numbers, however, have changed over the years, with more and more people opposed to the notion of restricting the World Wide Web. People largely see government control as a way the powerful can control the masses and the speech of the people, where the power ought to reside.

In 2014 Rasmussen reported only 26% of Americans believe the Internet should be restricted like radio and television. They appear to like the free-for-all of Internet information. That's true even if it is misinformation.

But what if the misinformation leads to pandemic of disease or literally helps cause a war?

Paul S. Piper, Librarian, Western Washington University explores myths and misinformation on the Internet, using a Martin Luther King site, which he refers to as odious as especially harmful for its hate-filled diatribe against a great leader that is filled with false ideas. He refers to sites like marinlutherking.org  as “counterfeit” in that they look legitimate but are not. He explains that many sites like this have links to those who are backing or creating the site but that few people check them out to determine whether or not the information is authentic or biased. 

Piper examines the number of sites carrying false material following the Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization. There were sites created that mirrored and were named similarly to the official World Trade Organization site. And while Piper exposes the problem, he says some of this trickery is actually useful as well.

Public personalities are sometimes spoofed on the Internet, with parodies that are frankly foolish enough that people know fairly quickly the content is not meant to be honest. Piper points out many people are gullible, finding bits of the spoofing from sources like The Onion cut and pasted and then recited as truth.

The research on Internet trouble is uniquely detailed by Piper, as he examines a number of Internet sites by categories, including those of hate groups, those who seem offered by fools and are fooling people into thinking misinformation is fact.

The worst of these sites, according to Piper, is misinformation about health. Some of the misinformation targets the elderly and those who have compromised immune systems or who have children, thus vulnerable people who need education and get the wrong kind. Piper points out the sites that claim cures for cancer or that aspartame causes various diseases, using faulty data to do so and sites that look official as well.

One of the sites Piper examines is the one he labels The Aids Myth Site which is he tells us is registered to an organization that calls itself the Institute for Investigative Medicine, Netherlands and says that whereas it is “not necessarily malicious” it gives false and misleading information while it quotes prominent scientists like Kary Mullis, a Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry. The site, he observes, tells readers that there is no proof that the HIV virus causes AIDS and that it is not sexually transmitted. Furthermore it goes further and says that people die because of the antiviral drugs they are given. And to confuse and confound even more the site says its ideas are censored and victimized.

So what about all of the trouble misinformation can cause? Piper provides us the information to look within sites and to investigate sources. By doing so, we educate ourselves further about a given subject.

Piper writes how “one person's misinformation can be another person's gold mine” and that “by learning how to deconstruct hoax sites we become empowered and can share this knowledge.”

It is sharing this knowledge that certain organizations do that can help people learn. For example for medical data Quack Watch and the Centers for Disease Control list doctors and issues so that people can find out who and where the trouble might be and often offer both sides of an issue, as on the subject of vaccinations.

And while some people worry about the spread of false facts and the trouble it causes during times of volatility, the scrutiny of the information itself can lead people, if that false information is countered and they learn themselves how that's done, to a better understanding of the truth when it is found. That search is the learning we need and can use, for it creates a depth of examination we might not otherwise learn.