I have come to the collusion that 95% of online content is regurgitated pap or else completely made up. This includes what’s published on legitimate sites like WebMD and BBB to forums, user comments and reddit.
People are quick to publish whatever they are thinking, as if it is factual. If you don’t believe this, read the comments after any news story, Nextdoor post or current event.
It either regurgitated bullet points from someone’s favorite political party, religion or conspiracy group or it’s pure fiction (often it’s both). Even worse, it’s not good fiction!
ChatGPT and bots will exacerbate this, turning the Internet into a (mostly) unreliable source of information.
Trump may have led the way by literally saying anything – regardless of whether it was knowingly or unknowingly true or false. He didn’t coin the phrase, “If you repeat something enough times, people will believe it,” but he certainly exemplifies it. His example, his proponents and his opponents all have adopted this reprehensible tactic.
So now, I trust very little of what I see on the Internet. It’s about as reliable as going to a rock concert to receive advice on surgery from random concert goers.
My approach is to follow the money first to judge if the person offering information has a vested interest is persuading me to believe something.
Then, if I want to vett the info further, I’ll consider source materials.
More and more, I’ll just pass altogether and got to a few trusted experts who have inside knowledge or expertise for advice – offline.