Who should be the judge?
The column “Before Sharing that article or meme…” by Tiffany Curtin in the issue of Dec. 3 states, “A research study by Princeton University and NYU revealed that adults over 65 are more than twice as likely to share false information over Facebook….” So, who is or should be the judge of what is false information? Facebook would have you believe that they are the judge. Also, Twitter seems to think they are the judge. What has happened to free speech?
Certainly, universities are not good judges of what is misleading as they censor free speech on their campuses according to their own political views. In Ms. Curtin’s point 4, that we should look for a video that has been altered, think back to how CNN (and others) altered the video of Nick Sandmann. They had to pay this young man for falsely representing what had happened at the March for Life in 2019. So, who can we trust to give us accurate information?
Instead of worrying about the spread of misinformation, we should be more concerned about allowing the free flow of ideas. There should not be one person or group that decides what is deemed to be true and what is deemed to be false. And who is to say that older people do not understand better what they are forwarding? Their worldly experience more than makes up for less experience with digital media.
Jeri E. Brown
Castle Rock