re: #311 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

another old hobbyhorse: when people started relying on social media feeds for news about anything other than what their friends and family were up to, we left ourselves open to all sorts of manipulation

and when “trending on Twitter” became a news item in and of itself, I began to fear for the future of the Republic

those fears turned out to be well grounded

I’m not going to let Facebook off the hook, but relying on friends and family for information has been around longer than the internet. And, as we know from old stories of sheriffs that ran towns, to lynchings of black men who didn’t even whistle at a white woman, disinformation has been around a long time.

Before Facebook, I was having to debunk stories my wife would receive in chain emails sent by family members, mainly via Snopes. I did manage to get one cousin to at least stop sending the stories to us, though I hope she stopped sending them period.

Setting aside the data collection as a related - but not exactly the same - issue, Facebook is just a public face on the problem of blindly accepting information from people who you know. But we at some level, have to do that. I’m not going to go verify everything my dad says about cars; I don’t have time. Learning just how far you can take someone else’s word is tough to do.

Edit: Most people don’t have healthy skepticism. They either have a whole bunch or nearly none.