The youths are very online. Who's teaching them about misinformation

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2022/09/seema-yasmin-misinformation-disinformation-what-the-fact-tools-online/

Dr. Seema Yasmin grew up, as she describes it, in a “family of conspiracy theorists.” As the daughter of immigrants living in England, the doctor-turned-journalist recalls, for instance, entertaining some outlandish beliefs about the British Royal Family. One book she and her cousins read and reread “told us that the Queen of England was a reptile in human form,” Yasmin writes in her 2021 book Viral BS: Medical Myths And Why We Fall For Them. “A cassette tape we played over and over said Prince Charles was a shapeshifter who feasted on newborn babies. We lapped it up, our eyes wide with fear and wonder.”

While these tales may sound absurd, there’s a good reason they stuck. As her own family was deeply aware, the truth about the British Empire is equally absurd: England, an island country the size of Wyoming, has invaded an estimated 90 percent of the world’s countries (the United States, meanwhile, has invaded 80 percent). It gained its power by enslaving, killing, and starving people elsewhere, including India, her parents’ birthplace. “That in itself was a conspiracy,” she tells me. “But it’s very much true, right?”

On top of that, her family endured racism and xenophobia while in England. So when she heard unsavory narratives about the Royal Family, it was easy to listen; the tales provided her community with a sense of collective belief and belonging.

Yasmin would go on to become a doctor, and in 2011 took a position as a “disease detective” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. Now she’s an author and professor at Stanford University who has written extensively about how false information goes viral and how to combat it, which she calls “the problem of our time.” And while she doesn’t believe in baby-eating reptilian shapeshifters, her upbringing has given her a refreshingly empathetic view of people who do believe in falsehoods. “It’s not hard for me to do that because I was that kid,” she says.

*snip*

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. Now break this down to the average American Deplorable goober,

small wonder some believe the SlobFather is the second coming.

[Farmer-Rick]

2. Good info

My father was big on thinking things out. He would always challenge any crazy ideas I might bring home.

[Demsrule86]

3. That is a family thing...my kids know the internet is full of crap as do all their friends.