Sorry for the late reply. I didn’t want to post a quick and unconsidered answer, and didn’t have time to write a long reply at the time.

So who decides what’s disinformation?

My aim is to compile and maintain a list of credible sources and repost their content in this community, so it is more visible to Lemmy users and the wider Fediverse. At the end of the day, it’s up to more people than just me to decide what topics to post on and what sources to use, since anyone can post. But as moderator, I will be quick to remove any content that doesn’t fit the brief.

How do you correct it when something that has been called disinformation turns out to itself be disinformation? I’m thinking about things like the lab leak theory or the Hunter Biden laptop, both of which were called disinformation, but ended up being either plausible or true?

Those are interesting examples. Both are cases where there was a clear political motive behind the stories that were run (or not run) in the media. But in both cases I think it was pretty obvious to me, even at the time, that both stories were not being honestly covered.

Snopes had a pretty good take on the lab leak theory, and many well respected scientists also called for this theory to be properly investigated, even publishing an article in the journal Science.

With the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lack of media coverage on that was a form of censorship by omission, arguably, and is certainly notable in terms of media bias. And the widespread claims of the story being “Russian disinformation” by US “intelligence” officials were definitely an example of a US administration disinformation campaign to discredit the story. It’s not just the Russians and Chinese who want to bury stories that make them look bad, after all.

But having said all that, I’m no more infallible than the next guy. But I’ll do my best to post updates on situations that are evolving or where new information comes to light.