LogFAQs > #944741658

DirtBasedSoap posted...

we are so fucked lol

>Claim of an unsubstantiated anecdotal story told in a county nobody had heard of before today
>Massively significant for entire nation!

PK_Spam posted...

Technology and the internet is so common place, at some point were going to see to tell people what is and isnt true on the internet, with citations or whatever.

and we need to teach children how to fact check, or this is going to keep getting worse.

I'm not sure that there's any real solution. Part of the problem is that the world's public education systems are such crap, but even people who *should* think critically rarely fact-check before believing and sharing claims that seem fake even at face value. And keep in mind that Snopes debunked the GWB upside down book photo almost 20 years ago and people still believe that.

And then the greater problem is that it's not simply a matter of the internet. Mainstream media outlets -- on BOTH sides -- knowingly report and repeat false claims, as well as reporting dubious claims with a brazen indifference which are only rarely retracted, corrected, or modified. Fishgate is a great example because some of the outlets buried the added context deep in the story while keeping the originally misleading title and opening paragraphs to suggest that Trump had acted inappropriately when he had simply followed Shinso Abe's lead. (Granted, it's worth mentioning that the media has *always* had problems when it came to embellishing or outright lying in its stories so it's not an entirely new issue.)

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.