Is most military and modeling information on social media "trustworthy"?

[seadude]

Getting real, honest, factual, and trustworthy information on just about anything on the Internet is getting to be a real pain nowadays.     
There's been a vast increase in sensationalist stories, deepfakes, lies, conspiracy theories, and so much more over the last few years. And now, AI (Artificial Intelligence) could make things much worse in the forseeable future. Not a pleasent thought.

When it comes to researching information about real military systems and/or what if/real type model projects, how worried are you that the information you are seeing will be either correct or will be false?
Too many times, I've watched various Youtube videos on military subjects where the person narrating has gotten numerous facts wrong about the weapon system. And most videos don't have "references" to back up their claims. And who are the people who are doing the narrating? Where are they from? What is their background and qualifications?
This is why I hardly ever use any videos as references, etc. when building model subjects. I just don't trust them. And I probably never will.

And Wikipedia is no better either. I might use it sometimes for research, but not often. Almost anybody can go to Wikipedia, create an account, and edit entries. Sure, they provide numbered footnotes/bibliography at the end of the articles. But how accurate is it, really?

And then there's been too many times I've seen people posting old black & white WW2 images of ships on Facebook.............except now they're colorised.
An example: Colorised photos of the USS Texas battleship. I cringe when I see these as I can't help but think that another person will see them and think that the Texas had that blue shade for the hull sides or this Deck Blue color for the main deck, etc.    Colorised black and white photos are not 100% accurate representations of how something looked way back when no matter how good the coloration process might be.

So my main question to everybody is this:
How worried are you that "incorrect information" will only get worse in the future when it comes to trying to do accurate research about military systems and hardware and also research for modeling projects?

[kerick]

I'm deeply worried the level of BS out there will only get worse and legitimate sources will only get buried under it. And I'm talking about any subject in our society, not just our historical interests. Is anybody teaching students today how to do proper research? How to check sources and use information from institutions that are real and not Joe bag o donuts on the internet? I've said for some time now most of the info you get on the the internet today you could get from some drunk on a bar stool. This is not good for our society at all.

[PR19_Kit]

And how accurate are the 'references' anyway?

Wikipedia's policies are suspect as well, I spent some time to to make their entries on various tilting trains more accurate, only to have them rejected by some over-zealous moderator on the grounds that I hadn't provided any references.

I pointed out that there weren't any around that time, and if they had been I'D have been the guy writing them as I was the world's first tilt system development engineer! 

[andrewj]

As Abraham Lincoln once famously said " don't believe everything you read on the internet "

[sandiego89]

Books generally seem better researched than you average television or youtube type segment, where they do things like show a CH-46 when the story called for a (gasp) CH-47!  Mrs. Sandiego89 loves when I notice the errors. 

Anyone can do a youtube channel.  Many are just there for revenue or clicks.  I would not rely on it. 

Also important to remember that many wartime records were pretty sparse, and no on really cared to note the precise color of the paint used on the Texas, paint and schemes could be a bit off, or that she looked very different during different parts of the war.   

[Weaver]

I have mixed feeling about this.

On the one hand, I do recognise the trends that people are worried about. On the other, I think that, with a bit of "internet literacy" and a decent reference library of your own, it's not that hard to distinguish a good Youtube video from a bad one. The bad ones usually feature AI voices and stock footage that is repetetive and doesn't entirely match the subject. Genuine enthusiasts' videos usually have distinct "personailty": a unique voice, snippets of personal info (no AI engagement farm ever says, "sorry there was no video last week: I was ill"), and they reply intelligently to comments for the first hour or two after the video goes up.

I generally find that Wikipedia is accurate as far as it goes about military/aviation subjects. The problems are mostly sins of omission and inconsistent data formats, usually imported from the sources. For instance, one aircraft's spec will list its range with all the neccessary qualifiers about flight profile, payload, external fuel, reserves, etc.. while another will just say, "range: 527 miles" with none of that.

I have a Wikipedia account and I occasionally edit pages when a) I'm 100% sure of my ground and b) I can cite sources. I also sometimes edit them for spelling and layout without changing the content at all. I stay well away from controversial subjects too, not just obvious ones like politics and the Culture War, but anything where I can see an "edit war" in the article's history and chat. If you find something particularly egregious then drop me a line and I'll see if I can fix it. Bear in mind my red lines and the need to cite independent, trustworthy (can of worms) sources though. "I know it 'cos I used to work on them" will be dismissed as "original research", the presumption being that if it's been published somewhere, then an editor will have checked it. We can have a whole debate about whether or not this is the right policy, but it won't change a damend thing at Wikipedia.

Speaking of editors, I think we have a rose-tinted view of the "good old days" of paper book publishing. I've got numerous books with numerous mistakes in them. Sometimes this is because period information was wrong or incomplete (about Cold War Soviet hardware, for example), but sometimes it's just poor research and/or bad editing. This isn't limited to unknown authors either: I've got a book about British Frigates and Destroyers here by Norman Friedman, who's a hugely respected author in the field, but I've noticed half-a-dozen mistakes in it. Some publishers were ALWAYS about making a fast buck, even in pre-internet days: I lost count of the number of times I saw the same inaccurate info about Soviet hardware repeated word-for-word in "reference" book-after-book, long after the fall of the Soviet Union and the publishing of more up to date info.

[Weaver]

And how accurate are the 'references' anyway?

Wikipedia's policies are suspect as well, I spent some time to to make their entries on various tilting trains more accurate, only to have them rejected by some over-zealous moderator on the grounds that I hadn't provided any references.

I pointed out that there weren't any around that time, and if they had been I'D have been the guy writing them as I was the world's first tilt system development engineer! 

IIRC we've had this discussion before. What you fell foul of is a blanket policy against "original research" designed to keep "a flying saucer landed in Stockport yesterday - source: I saw it with my own eyes!!!" off the site, something which I'm sure everybody would criticize Wikipedia for if they allowed.

To be considered a credible source, you have to be "published", the (somewhat dubious) presumption being that if you've been published, then you've been fact-checked. The way to get your info onto Wikipedia is to get somebody else to "publish" it on their website or in a Youtube video, and then cite it as a "credible source".

[PR19_Kit]

All they have to do is read the only book on the subject, which I quoted, but they'd not only not heard of it, they reckoned it didn't exist!

That was the end of me and anything to do with those presumptuous prats.

[NARSES2]

I'm deeply worried the level of BS out there will only get worse and legitimate sources will only get buried under it. And I'm talking about any subject in our society, not just our historical interests. Is anybody teaching students today how to do proper research? How to check sources and use information from institutions that are real and not Joe bag o donuts on the internet? I've said for some time now most of the info you get on the the internet today you could get from some drunk on a bar stool. This is not good for our society at all.

I couldn't of put my feelings on the subject much better, so I won't try.

I'm of the age where the vast majority of any research I do still comes from books, mainly force of habit and I'm more comfortable that way, but even then I will read 2 or 3 sources before coming to a view on a subject. However even then you have to recognise that books on WWII written 30 years ago will not have had access to as much original source information as those now. You can even get "new information" come to light on the 30 Years War for Lawd's sake, so it's a minefield.

The one thing I have learnt as I've got older is to try and keep an open mind on any subject, because even if I'm sure I'm correct I might just not be.

It's a minefield and one of the reasons I'm perhaps glad to be the age I am.

[frank2056]

The internet and in particular, searches have been affected by a technical term called Enshittification

Google searches for technical questions are mostly useless now (thanks to one guy with the reverse Midas touch), unless you add reddit to the search term.

Bing isn't much better. Now Google is slapping useless (and sometimes dangerous) AI results to searches. This article describes the issue and how to fix it. It won't improve the quality of the results, just removes AI "answers".

One solution is to search Archive.org. Their search engine isn't as obvious as Google's but it lets you search for text within results and the archive long gone web sites and books.

[PR19_Kit]

As I've been saying for years 'Corporate Greed Rules OK'.................

[Weaver]

All they have to do is read the only book on the subject, which I quoted, but they'd not only not heard of it, they reckoned it didn't exist!

That was the end of me and anything to do with those presumptuous prats.

Does it have an ISBN number to quote back at them? If so, game over in your favour.

[Weaver]

The internet and in particular, searches have been affected by a technical term called Enshittification

Google searches for technical questions are mostly useless now (thanks to one guy with the reverse Midas touch), unless you add reddit to the search term.

Bing isn't much better. Now Google is slapping useless (and sometimes dangerous) AI results to searches. This article describes the issue and how to fix it. It won't improve the quality of the results, just removes AI "answers".

One solution is to search Archive.org. Their search engine isn't as obvious as Google's but it lets you search for text within results and the archive long gone web sites and books.

Been using Ecosia for a few years now - seems okay.

[PR19_Kit]

Does it have an ISBN number to quote back at them? If so, game over in your favour.

Of course it does, but they only made one print run of it, and that was in the 80s. Before 'they' were born I expect................

[Dizzyfugu]

Even information in many books is doubtful, esp. when authors try to guess things about contemporary topics at the time of writing. The Cold War era is notorious for that, and thankfully some competent authors have, after the fall of the Soviet Union, cleared up a lot of myths and guesstimates. But many things are still doubtful - "I found it online" is never a trustworthy source, at least without some cross-checks or source references.