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Serious question, I counted 312 posts in one week and 309 of them were the same recycling claim
I started keeping a tally in a notes app back in March after a cousin sent me the same screenshot about recycling three times in one month, and by Sunday night the count hit 312 posts on my feeds with only 3 that listed a source anyone could go check. What got me was how much harder it used to be to share something, you had to retype it or cut the clipping out, so stuff moved slower and usually got questioned before it traveled far. So for the folks here who fact check stuff regularly, what is your cutoff for deciding a viral claim is worth digging into versus just letting it die?
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rodriguez.mia12d ago
The part about "you had to retype it or cut the clipping out" really hits for me, because that friction used to do a lot of free work for us. If you had to put in effort to pass something along, you usually read it twice first, and that second read is where most junk dies. Now sharing takes half a second and zero thought, so the only filter left is the person on the other end bothering to check, and they have no reason to bother when ten other people already shared it. My cutoff is basically whether the claim is still moving after a week or whether it keeps changing shape as it spreads, because a claim that mutates is usually hiding something. The ones that stay word for word identical for months with no source, like your recycling screenshot, I just let die. You are never going to out fact check a cousin with a forward button.
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