I know not everyone is on social media. I am on Facebook only because I want to keep in touch with my family and friends. (Isn’t that what Facebook was meant for anyway?) I have a page set up for this blog as well, but I’m not too active on it. Anyway, Facebook has become the breeding zone for stupidity, rude-ass behavior, and misinformation.
The thing I’ve been seeing a lot of lately – actually since 2016 – are political posts. Sometimes, I check out the comments and it blows my mind how rude and ridiculous people can be. I can’t help but debate with myself about dropping off of Facebook for good…but then…family and friends…
Most of the comments are either from folks who agree or folks who fact-check everything – which is absolutely fine, as long as you don’t get your info from Fox News. Remember how they were sued for almost $800 million for outright lying to the viewers? Anyway, fact-check all you want but here’s a thought…
Being Aunt Debbie 
I certainly agree about fact-checking! Snopes.com is my go-to resource. You can put key words into the “Search Snopes” box to find out if they have looked into that particular questionable story. For example, try searching “Simone Biles drugs” or “Tim Walz daughter loans” (without the quotes).
UC Berkeley Library has an even more comprehensive resource at https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=620677&p=4322330. There are tabs for About Fake News, Detecting Fake News, Real News, and Fact Checkers.
Another way I protect myself on Facebook is to limit who can see and comment on my posts to my friends only.
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I use https://www.verifythis.com/ . You can text or email them questions and they will check it out. They also put out a newsletter 6 days a week. In the newsletter they tackle several rumors going around. They use multiple sources. I will check out Berkeley. I have used Snopes before but people are getting to where they won’t believe anything that comes from them.
My Facebook account is carefully guarded. Only people on my friends list can see what I post or even comment. The biggest problem is while reading friends’ posts and other pages’ posts. People will very quickly try to dispell what is posted based on not fact, but opinion. Seems that most people can’t distinguish between the two these days. Public pages are the worst when it comes to comments; the rudeness is astounding. I just wish more people would be nice instead of insulting and by golly by cracken, fact-check their own damn information before trying to make someone else look stupid. Lol.
Does all that make sense? I’m running on very little sleep and my pain level is high.
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That makes a helluva lot of sense!
I have had that experience most recentlly in a FB group I joined in order to see what all the controversy around a proposed change in an organization’s bylaws was about. I went into it feeling sort of on their side, but their vehemence, sniping, and name-calling pushed me to the other side!
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That’s part of the reason I don’t do groups anymore! People can be so nasty sometimes. It disgusts me!
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With some people, even if you show them proof it is fake news, they are just set to believe what they will believe. The ones that get me are the fake missing people reports… I never forward a report without checking to see if they are really missing and there are a lot of fake ones out there.
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I share missing posts from legitimate sites…from my state or national. That’s it.
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