3 ms·

I remember at a certain point I realized that the citations on cracked.com were often abused or flat out debunked the very thing the author claimed they did. I

by c3534l 6y ago

I remember at a certain point I realized that the citations on cracked.com were often abused or flat out debunked the very thing the author claimed they did. I hadn't given up on the site yet, so I would post in the comments what the citations actually said. I'm still baffled by the generally negative reactions to doing so, but I do remember people saying things like "why should I trust you, some random dude in the comments, rather than a professional writer whose job it is to research these things?" Because it's a link to a website that anyone can read! But people will argue with you for 5 minutes rather than click on a link and read the surrounding few paragraphs to see that the writer took the source out of context.

cogman10 6y ago
Disinformation is pretty bad and hard to combat. The common game my family will play is "I've done my research and it's XYZ" When asked "Oh, what resources did you use to land on XYZ?" It's very frequently met with silence. The problem, as I see it, is that they'll read something on a facebook post which agrees with their existing biases. Over time they'll see the same thing reposted but with a slightly different twist and.. viola.. They've "researched" it. A good example of this is when anti-vaccination comes up. If you've done your research, you know that vaccines are safe[0], effective[1], don't cause autism[2] and pretty much a good thing for most everyone (excluding immunocompromised and the very VERY few people that react to vaccines). Yet, still, I'll run into family on facebook that have "done their research" on the matter and generally can only link back to some anti-vaxx blog post for evidence (if that, often nothing). What's worse, they'll completely dismiss any evidence to the contrary as being "shills", "biased", "payed off" or whatever other conspiracy theory they like. They've made the position their identity and refuting it makes them feel attacked. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html [1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us-measles-cases https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us... [2] https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associa...

by c3534l 6y ago

cogman10 6y ago

Disinformation is pretty bad and hard to combat. The common game my family will play is "I've done my research and it's XYZ" When asked "Oh, what resources did you use to land on XYZ?" It's very frequently met with silence. The problem, as I see it, is that they'll read something on a facebook post which agrees with their existing biases. Over time they'll see the same thing reposted but with a slightly different twist and.. viola.. They've "researched" it. A good example of this is when anti-vaccination comes up. If you've done your research, you know that vaccines are safe[0], effective[1], don't cause autism[2] and pretty much a good thing for most everyone (excluding immunocompromised and the very VERY few people that react to vaccines). Yet, still, I'll run into family on facebook that have "done their research" on the matter and generally can only link back to some anti-vaxx blog post for evidence (if that, often nothing). What's worse, they'll completely dismiss any evidence to the contrary as being "shills", "biased", "payed off" or whatever other conspiracy theory they like. They've made the position their identity and refuting it makes them feel attacked. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html [1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us-measles-cases https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us... [2] https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associa...