{"id":6163,"date":"2018-06-28T19:04:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T19:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=6163"},"modified":"2025-12-31T10:17:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T18:17:48","slug":"the-main-purpose-of-social-media-is-to-spread-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2018\/06\/28\/the-main-purpose-of-social-media-is-to-spread-disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"The main purpose of social media is to spread disinformation?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is the main purpose of social media to spread disinformation? Sure seems so, whether intentional or unintentional.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, our local Sheriff’s Office spread disinformation<\/a> on Twitter with a goal of encouraging safe driving (definitely approve that!) But they did so by using a logical fallacy linking bike and pedestrian accidents to cellular phone usage, a conclusion that is false per the reference they cited in their tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because viewers of the tweet learned something that was not true, viewers became dumber by reading the message!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Facebook, a “friend” shared a poster with a quote from a CEO saying he did not want those who voted for a candidate to shop at his stores<\/a>. Of course, he did not actually say what was in the poster. Yet none of the people in the FB thread bothered to investigate whether the quote was true or not – they accepted it without question – which only reinforced the message! That left viewers of the post dumber than before they had seen it \ud83d\ude42 Indeed, I posted a link to Snopes and the only reply to that was that Snopes=CNN, therefore, the correct information presented, is not true (which is a logical fallacy unto itself).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I saw this item on Twitter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[update – the image file for this has gone missing when the web site was moved to a new server]

It’s true that the Democrat Governor of Montana vetoed “direct primary care” bills<\/a> – twice, in fact. The last veto was in early 2017.\u00a0 However, in December 2017, the state’s insurance regulator went ahead and approved direct primary care offerings<\/a>\u00a0and there are now direct primary care medical practices in Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But those who see and share the above tweet will conclude that DPC is not allowed in Montana. This illustrates how very old information lives on forever on social media. A side effect is that people become dumber by viewing social media!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are 3 examples from the past 2 days. Obviously, there are many thousands of such examples every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media usage makes us dumber every day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the main purpose of social media to spread disinformation? Sure seems so, whether intentional or unintentional. Yesterday, our local Sheriff’s Office spread disinformation on Twitter with a goal of encouraging safe driving (definitely approve that!) But they did so by using a logical fallacy linking bike and pedestrian accidents to cellular phone usage, a conclusion that is false per the reference they cited in their tweet. Because viewers of the tweet learned something that was not true, viewers became…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,24,40,42,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-in-practice","category-fictional-news","category-social-media","category-stupidity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20138,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6163\/revisions\/20138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}