this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
391 points (95.4% liked)
me_irl
7850 readers
3321 users here now
All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Considering plausibility and the reliability of the source, as one does when using critical thinking, will always be useful.
Which requires a baseline of knowledge.
Which requires education. Which is being gutted or diluted and has been at least since NCLB.
I've tried building a curriculum around this idea. The typical level of undereducated is stunning.
People are most susceptible to false claims when they back up or collaborate something they already believe. So most of the time people who fall for fake news/AI slop/etc will consider it plausible by default, they're only giving it attention because it seems plausible based on their current beliefs.
A lot of stuff like this spreads in echo chambers as well, so there will often be a community of like minded people, who all agree with it, talking about how true it is. In those circumstances it's pretty easy to assume that if it matches you and your community's beliefs/knowledge, and no one else has identified it as false, that it's probably true or mostly true.