Hay in a Needlestack

I have a confession: I'm "that guy". When I see some bogus article or hoax or something show up in my Facebook feed, I'm the one that posts a link to Snopes or a similar site debunking it. I want to explain why I do that.

I was born in 1987. When I was young, my father worked at RadioShack, which at the time was a major technology retailer. One effect of that is that he was pretty up on modern computers and what-not, so as a result we what, for the time, were great computers. Our first one was a Tandy 1000 TX. That thing was top of the line at the time, although at this point the average cell phone exceeds it in almost every statistical category by several thousand times. Anyhow, I believe it was our second PC, something similar to this one but a bit older, that really gave us our first taste of the internet. It had a 14.4k dial-up modem. That, in modern terms, is insanely slow, but it was enough to connect us to the world beyond our four walls. And wow, was it fantastic. We had an ISP called Prodigy, and I learned all kinds of things from their kids features. I particularly remember a feature where you took a "tour" of the space shuttle. I actually knew where I would sit when I grew up and became an astronaut. (At the time, I considered my following that particular career path to be an established fact.)

Nostalgia aside, the internet has been a part of my life since I was very young, and while there have certainly been negatives to it, on the whole I'm better off. Look at it this way: both blog entries I've written so far were seen by friends in Europe minutes after I published them. A hundred years ago, that would scarcely have been imaginable. The technology of the internet connects people in marvelous ways, allowing the sharing of knowledge like never before in human history. That's an awesome thing, but there's a dark side to it: the spread of misinformation. Hoaxes, scams, and outright lies. Far as I'm concerned, they're an absolute stain on what internet really can be, and cast doubt on all the good that the internet can do. Sadly, finding the truth often is finding the inverted-proverbial hay in a needlestack. However, I want to share a few tips that might help spot the lies.

• Consider the source. I'll use an example that I, I have to admit, fell for at the time. Not long ago there was a report going around that people shoving their heads together to take selfies with friends was leading to an increase in transmission of head lice. Tracing this back, we find that the story was started by a lice treatment clinic. I'd have learned that if I'd read reports more carefully and researched, but I didn't. 
• That leads in to my second point: research. Google that crap! In many cases, somebody has already done the work of debunking a hoax by the time it reaches you, and all you have to do is find it.
• Be skeptical of big news from small sources. Let's say, hypothetically, one of my friends posted an article saying the President had been assassinated. The first thing I'd do would be to check major news sources: CNN, Fox News, that sort of thing. If something that big happened, obviously they'd all be talking about it. If you only see something like that on one little site, chances are it's a lie.
• I mentioned it earlier, but I want to point out a great resource: Snopes.com. It isn't prefect, nothing is, but they tend to have well written, sourced articles debunking most major hoaxes. A quick search there can be very illuminating.

There's more I could say about this subject, and it's something I'll probably revisit later,  but I want to leave you with one more piece of advice: think. Think critically. Don't just trust everything you see. Like the man said: