You Are Entitled To Your Own Opinion, But You Are Not Entitled To Your Own Facts
- jim Young 20251002 (W: 785)
“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell
There are still too many people spreading too much garbage on Facebook and still too little that Facebook is doing about it.
People are using false and misleading information to spread hate, racism and misinformation on social media. What’s social about that? Some of those people just don’t care and some of those people are just too ignorant to bother checking to see if what they are spreading is even true.
If you can learn how to spread ignorance and lies on Facebook you can learn how to fact-check.
If you don’t have time to fact-check, how dare you take the time to spread rumours just because you like what it says? Stop pretending to be part of the news media that you are always blaming for doing exactly what YOU are doing.
There’s an old saying, “If you don’t have time to do the job right the first time, where will you find the time to do it again.” Except this is even worse because once you have spread malicious lies in a Facebook post - there’s no going back. You can’t undo the damage you’ve done.
I’ve had people tell me they rely on me to let them know if something they post isn’t true. That’s a cop out. That’s like saying you didn’t call the fire department when you saw a house burning down because you figured someone else would do it.
Even if someone else was to do it, how much damage would be sustained in the time that YOU didn’t do it yourself?
Here’s just one example of the garbage that’s on Facebook and just how quick and easy it is to discredit it.
Today, I saw this post on Facebook.
It’s innocent enough and doesn’t really tell you anything about anything other than implying it involves Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
So I clicked on the page and was directed to the following page.
Well THAT headline is interesting enough, although it does seem a little extreme even for the Donald. Sure Donnie threatened to deport Musk awhile ago when they were having their first lover’s spat, but it really seemed like more of an idol threat. Trump likes to puff up his chest a lot, you know?
Coming from a CBC site, gives it a bit of legitimacy even for those of you who discredit the CBC primarily when you disagree with them. Because that seems to be the process now. When you disagree with a credible source just call it “fake news” loud enough and long enough and people will believe you. That’s much easier than looking to multiple sources to try and discover the real truth. Maybe it IS fake news and maybe it isn’t, but it certainly doesn’t become fake news just because you don’t agree with it.
Why WOULDN’T you want to know what the truth is? And therein lies the problem. Most people don’t WANT to know the truth if it’s unpleasant to them.
In reality, the CBC had absolutely nothing to do with this story. Here’s what a page from the CBC looks like.
Notice the difference? It’s not really obvious, but if you look at the next screen the arrow on the photo on the left points to the following URL address: financialsca.com
 |
| Will the real CBC please stand up? |
If that’s not enough of a red flag to tell you not to trust anything about the first post, try typing financialsca.com in the url of a blank web page and see where it gets you.
Big Surprise! This is the result I got.
However, if you type cbc.ca into your url… you will likely see something closer to this.
See how easy that was? And how much time did it take? You owe it to yourself to know what’s really going on in the world and you owe it to your friends, your family and your community to ensure you’re not just spreading rumours, misinformation, racism and hate literature.
There. You’ve just had your first lesson in Fact Checking 101. That wasn’t painful was it?
For more on how to fact check, check out some of these following links.
University of Tampa - How to Fact Check
Government of Canada - Online Disinformation
Wikipedia’s List of Fact Checking Websites
Falmouth University: 5 Ways Journalists Fact Check Stories
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