Recently I encountered two separate postings on Facebook by my friends. The first was the old ‘change your settings because Facebook lets everyone see everything now’ hoax. The second was a comment that Fox News reported that Bohner was holding the Sandy hurricane bill so that it may receive Full attention. I dutifully Googled both. Neither came back as truth from my review of the information.
What’s interesting to me is wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a truth meter before you finished posting something?
In the case of the Facebook post there are references going back years refuting the urban legend. So pretty easy to quickly show a truth meter of completely false.
In the case of Bohner, I’m sure my friend who watches Fox News day and night that an announcer did say what she thought she heard. Perhaps this was a transient comment by the announcer and possibly not backed up with any kind of quote. At least I never found one. Hours later as every politician beat up on the delay the news story quickly turned to a promise that the bill will be looked at as soon as possible and everyone is forgiving and forgetting.
So in the case of the Bohner post I’d expect a half truth needle.
The best thing about Google is when my political friends try to use the ‘liberal media’ bias card I can point to Google as an unbiased source of both conservative and liberal sources. While Google may sometimes have an order bias based on most found that could influence the search results, a dutiful review of a few pages typically provides all sides of any political quote.
But back to the posting truth meter. I don’t see this ever becoming a reality. There’s no way Facebook would ever climb into bed with Google and add something like that to their precious interface. And nine out of ten posts are about puppies and cats so it wouldn’t be needed.
Me? I’ll keep Googling. It’s a great resource for learning more about everything.
Tim Hitchings 