I stand corrected...
Friends... Respect me enough to correct me.
If you see me post something that is misinformation or disinformation, please correct me with the accurate information you have to the contrary. Know that I welcome all respectful correction - and 'respectful' is a truly operative term here.
I can't research everything with the depth I would like or that the subject deserves (prior to posting), particularly if I feel the information is time-sensitive. In those rare times, I rely on trusted friends as sources of information while my own further investigation is pending. This can lead to a hasty posting of incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading information.
Misinformation and disinformation are not only inconvenient, both damage the public infosphere.
We live in a time of heightened deception, information cover-up, and information distortion. Please, do not add to the struggle for informing ourselves accurately on what's what out here. Too much is at stake these days. Seriously, folks.
I have been quite shocked lately when I have presented contrary and accurate information to folks that I respect on FB. The responses I've gotten have ranged from silence to denial. In most cases, folks leave the misinformation or disinformation out there. They cite reasons for this from an apparent interest in the info (regardless of accuracy) to arguing against the facts I present without so much as fully checking what I've presented.
It matters that the information that's disseminated be correct. It's not trivial the influence you have over your circles. Folks who trust you can (as I have) come away with a skewed view of a situation (or even of reality itself).
Depriving people of accurate information is a tactic of brainwashing, y'all. And when you aren't using this technique to uplift folks' knowledge base, you do them a disservice and you do yourself a disservice as the purveyor of bad information.
When you learn one thing - as psychologists note - you aren't learning something else. Withholding information is not the only way to 'dumb people down.' Another, more insidious, way to keep people ignorant is to fill them with irrelevant or inaccurate information.
Don't join in this effort, please. Because, if you don't know that this is being done purposefully in some levels of our society, well, now you know. It is. This "fake news" bloom is not accidental. It keeps folks unstable and ill-informed and in an age of information, this is one of the greatest weapons of mass distraction (& eventual mass destruction).
Be smart out here my people. Do post what you find interesting, but if it is misleading or inaccurate, don't do what the imperialist propaganda arm does to folks already. Don't misinform people who trust you to tell them and share with them truth, to the best of your ability.
And when you are in error and realize it, do the smarter thing and remove the errant info and post its correction instead. Let's work together to clean up the infosphere.
We'll all be better (informed) for it.
