As shown on another current thread, the manner in which information circulates around the planet is vastly different than pre-web. With so many people getting their news and just plain general information from the web, it's obvious how this influences people, but businesses and entire economies.

Just one example - the recent swine flu scare in Mexico devastated this country's tourism, and cost it many millions. Was it really as bad as the media and people made it out to be? Of course not.

With good, bad, and just plain ugly information being tossed on the web, are you compelled to correct someone when you see information that is inaccurate or way off? Or, do you just leave it alone, feeling it's not worth your time & effort to comment?

 

If people send chain mails with ridiculous info in them, I'll usually "Reply All" with a link to snopes or some other resource that debunks it. Hopefully it will cause people to hesitate and think before they forward the next e-mail. Or maybe it will give other people on the receiver list the motivation to go do their own research and find the truth for themselves.

 

I think it's funny and just goes to show that people pay more attention to the prevalence of information as a way to measure the truthfulness of said information, when in fact prevalence and truthfulness are in no way correlated.