I'm not sure where you got the impression that I wanted people to clean up misinformation from the web. That certainly wasn't my intent.
Perhaps you and I move in different social circles - but I get a lot of forwarded "claims" on WhatsApp and Twitter. Well-meaning people who see an image with some text on it and send it to their friends & family.
My blog post is mostly aimed at them - showing how easy it can be to check sources.
I find much of that sort of instant messaging communication is less about informing others and is more about social signalling. The sender is asking for emotional support and social solidarity.
My understanding is that text messaging is rarely used for knowledge sharing, and is primarily used for social bonding[0]. In my own experience, I never receive such messages from individuals that aren't aware that I already agree with their intended interpretation.
Sorry, maybe I am burned on that already, but that is what I often hear when people bring up misinformation. That is the feedback legislators often give on that topic.
Certainly a good idea to search for some background. I think the velocity of social media might encourage people to skip that step, made the mistake myself too. People want to be the first to share this "hot" news with their peers.
I think reducing expectations of users towards content on the net could help as educational measure. Treat it as false until you know better yourself.
Searching and (mostly) debunking the things my mom forwards me has been a long time hobby of mine. Snopes has made my job so much easier, now I can just hit reply and paste the Snopes link back to her.
The internet is filled with so much easily accessible information, it's incredible, but you need the basic skills to determine what claims to believe in order to make any sense of it.
Now if only my family could believe Snopes. They are too set in their thoughts to believe not everything is some conspiracy theory.
Now when I debunk stuff off Facebook they continue to disagree with me because I don't have "all the facts", not like they do either.
Sometimes a simple thing is just too simple for them, those coin shortages really are some sort of mass government takeover and not just caused by people not paying with coins as much & places being shutdown and less likely to redistribute coins back into the economy. sigh
... Now for my actual rant.. While I feel pointless I like to show for contrast.
Now if I actually bring up the attorney general for the US state of Oregon suing the Feds for actually kidnapping people eh... That's apparently not an interesting story and protesters or rioters in their eyes deserve it. I understand I don't know the whole story, but I think there is something there to follow.
As someone said to me recently, this is basically Vietnam story wise. Extremes on both sides.
Lol, my URL links, despite not thinking it helps much because I start off with the bias thinking this is wrong, because of the many different videos across the country showing protesters are not all rioters. And the freedom to protest is a right in my eyes.
Violence begets violence begets violence begets violence.
And yes, I know Obama signed this into law so legally the Feds have the right to randomly nap you but I still think it's a very questionable law.
They need to understand that Snopes is not an authoritative source on its own. It provides links to other sources that provide information about the claim.
People also need to understand that those links are also not authoritative, and that what links are provided (and ones that are not) are a result of human choice, and humans are known to be fallible in many different ways.
Perhaps you and I move in different social circles - but I get a lot of forwarded "claims" on WhatsApp and Twitter. Well-meaning people who see an image with some text on it and send it to their friends & family.
My blog post is mostly aimed at them - showing how easy it can be to check sources.