Truth/Lies on Facebook

It’s so easy to spread information on Facebook.  A click of a key on the ‘share’ sign is enough to get information from me to my 150 ‘friends’ on fb and from them on to thousands more. I think this can be a fine thing.  I also think it can be a horrific thing.

I’ve noticed recently, more and more falsehoods spread through fb.  I think it really hit me first during the 2012 Presidential election.  I saw more lies and outright nastiness than I had hoped to encounter in my entire life.  I finally made it through the election period and thought things would settle down.  But what happened, I believe, is that people really began to understand the power of social media during that time. 

I still see political information, false, true, and unproveable one way or the other, on fb.  But, what I am seeing more of on fb is global political/environmental information.  Much of it is unfounded or out dated.  I’ll see something in one month and it will have comments indicating the information is false and accurate websites will be noted for obtaining true information.  Then, three months later the same false story will start circulating. At first I would try to contact the person spreading the ‘false’ story but then I realized, by the time I see it and contact the person, it is already way too late and in the ipads/phones/computers of thousands of other people. Too late to stop, too late to fix.

You might wonder why this worries me so much and I can only explain it by saying I don’t think people are educated enough or careful enough to verify a story/rumor before sharing it. I also don’t think peopole understand how many potential viewers or readers they are reaching when they push the ‘share’ button.
If I could make a change it would be to change how people view social media and to encourage people to think before they share. Before we delete anything on our computers, there is usually a pause asking us if we really mean to delete. If we had that kind of reminder on ‘share,’ it may make us think a bit more before we hit the button.
In the mean time, I encourage people to ‘hide’ or ‘report as spam’ the false or outdated messages and think twice before sharing.