Yes, it is. Years ago I went through a period of personally fact-checking stories across the board as they were being discussed by my FB contacts. It is hard to quantify just how time consuming this was.
Some stories were super easy to debunk. Others took days to weeks of research and sometimes mathematical modeling. Other stories took 10+ months to wait of legal evidence to surface. I remember one particular case where someone tried to burn down an black church and spray painted "Vote Trump" on the side of the building. The outrage and blame was immediate, massive and pretty much across the board. I looked at it from a game theory perspective. It just didn't make sense. It took some months for law enforcement to finally track down the culprit: It was one of the members of the church, black, of course, who had a problem with the pastor (or something like that) and thought he could burn down the church and deflect blame through his graffiti.
There were cases like this on both sides of the US political spectrum, of course. This is one I remember. A lot of the cases on the other side have to do with things like climate change and vaccine denial.
The point is, it takes a lot of time and effort. It's almost impossible. And, when you finally get down to facts, convincing people what they were told was wrong is pretty much impossible. They can't un-see the lie when it was carpet-bombed into their brains.
Not sure what the solution might be. Taking sides doesn't seem to be a good idea.
Of course, none of the current fact-checkers on the major platforms are doing anything like that.
I might be wrong, but I imagine each has a binder with a bunch of bullet points under each topic, listing common claims determined to be false by management. Probably some post-it notes holding new claims that their manager saw the previous day and didn't like.
Maybe the 'lab-leak' claim is scratched out.. it's permitted to be spoken of, now.
Yes, it is. Years ago I went through a period of personally fact-checking stories across the board as they were being discussed by my FB contacts. It is hard to quantify just how time consuming this was.
Some stories were super easy to debunk. Others took days to weeks of research and sometimes mathematical modeling. Other stories took 10+ months to wait of legal evidence to surface. I remember one particular case where someone tried to burn down an black church and spray painted "Vote Trump" on the side of the building. The outrage and blame was immediate, massive and pretty much across the board. I looked at it from a game theory perspective. It just didn't make sense. It took some months for law enforcement to finally track down the culprit: It was one of the members of the church, black, of course, who had a problem with the pastor (or something like that) and thought he could burn down the church and deflect blame through his graffiti.
There were cases like this on both sides of the US political spectrum, of course. This is one I remember. A lot of the cases on the other side have to do with things like climate change and vaccine denial.
The point is, it takes a lot of time and effort. It's almost impossible. And, when you finally get down to facts, convincing people what they were told was wrong is pretty much impossible. They can't un-see the lie when it was carpet-bombed into their brains.
Not sure what the solution might be. Taking sides doesn't seem to be a good idea.