Is Twitter Wrong?

It isn’t directly connected with Fake Buddha Quotes, but this article on tweets about Hurricane Sandy hits the Fake Information nail right on the head with the following sentence:

It is traditional, when the US is menaced by a weather event, for people to tweet pictures of things that aren’t it.

You have to wonder why this is. Presumably for some people the thrill of sharing false information is more attractive than the prospect of being seen as gullible or deceitful.

And are there even any consequences for those who pass on false information like this? It does seem that many people (politicians, for example) can be caught out over and over again and still be seen as credible in the eyes of many.

it is encouraging, though, that many people have jumped in with corrections. Perhaps this whole posting-fake-information thing will eventually turn out to be a passing fad as access to fact-checking becomes easier and easier. After all, I can’t remember the last time I had one of those “Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw:” emails giving lurid and spectacularly false information about some virus that we have to delete immediately, and which turns out to be some innocuous part of my computer’s operating system. Those emails were common just a few years ago.