Very often we hear the boast from posters on this forum that they don’t have Facebook/Twitter or so on because it’s a hotbed of lies and disinformation. Well in the past couple of days we have had a poster spreading lies about the reasons Russia have attacked Ukraine, we have had speculation on the source of the coronavirus which has sparked a slew of people saying they know it all along, and we’ve had completely wrong information about the progress of the Ukrainian invasion. Then we have the relatively unimportant attacks on minor royals who we’ve decided aren’t worthy of the name and we’ve had scaremongering about covid testing.
Nobody is immune to succumbing to disinformation. Don’t think that just because you’re a savvy old bird that they’ll get nothing past you. I’d be willing to bet that there are things you think are true that are based on false facts created by some unknown source. I don’t exclude myself from this.
If something is outlandish, if something is unlikely, if something sounds plausible because it supports your preconceptions but doesn’t have any facts to back it up, please take a minute to think, is this true? Remember that half an hour on google isn’t the same as several years’ experience in a subject. There’s no point in complaining about Facebook when that’s just a bigger version of Gransnet. People spread lies there and they spread lies here.
Now please feel free to tell me I don’t run the site, people can post what they like and that I have a stick up my a***. Heard it all before.
