I do want to point out that the word was more frequently used in 2004[0], the furthest back Google Trends will let me go. Our usage today is even substantially lower than that in 2009.

I'm not saying that the government isn't trying to manipulate the topics and use the same words too. After all, that's the entire thing we're discussing. But that doesn't mean that they get to control words either. That's an unwinnable battle because the adversary has such an easy path to victory. All you need to do is take language people are using and incorporate it into your own, but with slightly different (but reasonable) meaning. You're actively engaging in their strategy. Words are defined by how they are used and understood by the public. So if you understand my intention and that I am not using it in this same manipulative manner, then we're pushing back and ensuring they do not take control of our language.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=m...

I'm not a latin expert, but "malinformation" seems like an etomogically perfect word to describe a "whataboutism"

Or an accusation of one.

This is why it is important to understand the distinction between misinformation and disinformation. The former being an idiot, the latter being a manipulator. But those that want to sow discord want us to conflate the two, which is rather easy. I'd say it is pretty common with any word that becomes a hot button itself.

I agree. But, to be clear, I consider any accusation of "whataboutism" I see to be disinformation by default, until proven otherwise from context, because by far most use of it I saw was as a way to shut down good discussion points. I have a short list of such words/phrases; another notable one is "dog whistle", which I have never seen used in good faith on-line.

My default position is misinformation because I think people being dumb is more likely then them attempting to gaslight others. They get the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, but it definitely raises suspicion.

The same goes for dog whistling. It is easy to see dog whistling everywhere because that's its entire purpose: to hide within normalized speech. Covert speech is not covert if the only ones using that speech are manipulators. But that's why fighting it is so hard, because you don't know who's a useful idiot and who's a manipulator. But it is clear that the manipulators hide in a sea of useful idiots and parrots.

So I think good faith is trying to extract the signal from the noise and to differentiate the two rather than assuming maliciousness.

> It is easy to see dog whistling everywhere because that's its entire purpose: to hide within normalized speech.

It is easy to see dog whistling everywhere because that's the phrase's entire purpose: it's a weapon. It's an accusation that's cheap to make, and near-impossible to disprove.

Sure, legitimate cases of dog whistling probably exist. It's impossible to tell for sure, because the "test" has near 100% false-positive rate. Or, put another way, talking about dog whistling being a thing is itself malinformation - technically the phenomenon exists, but bringing attention to it is between confused and malicious.

Whatever happened to "wrong"? As in, "that's wrong". Ideally followed by some reasoning.

All of these fancier words like whataboutism or misinformation are just attempts to assert authority via the word. They don't convey additional meaning.

Misinformation and disinformation are just nuanced versions of wrong. The former means unintentional and the latter means intentional. The distinctions are useful here because the latter is a claim that the person spouting the information is corrupt and knowingly trying to propagate lies. This is more universally considered bad. People are wrong all the time, but most people aren't intentionally spreading lies.

Malinformation doesn't mean something is wrong but that it is misleading. This distinction is important because if you claim malinformation you actually aren't claiming that the information used is wrong, but the way it is is. A classic example of this is white nationalists using the phrase "despite being 13% of the population black people <insert something about crime here>". While the statistics may be accurate it does not incorporate the complexities involved which end up decoupling race from the statistics. To put it more accurately, this is an aggregation error (more specifically ascertainment bias, a form of collider bias on conditional probabilities). Without the deaggregation here it is natural to assume that the conditional variable here is ethnicity (the intent of the malinformation) but in reality this is misleading because the way the information was presented is not entirely accurate.

Malinformation is specifically difficult to defend against because one can google to confirm accuracy of claims. But in reality it takes expertise to dismantle the claims. It is preying upon people's naivety and inability to process information that they are not intimately familiar with (which is all of us, just in different subjects). So it is important to recognize that this form of manipulation exists. The defense is to maintain skepticism and consult experts. Looking for consensus among experts specifically.

These words do in fact convey a significant amount of additional meaning and the distinctions are important. Especially if we're trying to encourage more meaningful and nuanced discussions.

Just labeling true things that you don't like as "malinformation" does not encourage more meaningful and nuanced discussions.

Who said I was encouraging that? I'm saying you have to use nuance to explain how something is malinformation in the first place. I even did this in my example. We need good faith discussions and I do think you need to step up your game here a bit.

"Misinformation" might (sometimes) be a synonym for "wrong".... but "whataboutism", "disinformation", "malinformation" are not. They mean different things.

Disinformation actually does mean wrong. But it also is an accusation of maliciousness. That's the distinguishing feature between misinformation and disinformation: intent and prior knowledge. But with the other two I agree. Whataboutism is non-sequitur arguments. Malinformation is cherry-picking data with intent to deceive.