• Furbag@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    145
    ·
    edit-2
    15 hours ago

    This is a great example of the importance of teaching people critical thinking skills.

    If you stop to analyze what was written in this sensationalized post rather than acting on your emotions, the first question that should come into mind is “who stopped them?”. There are no checkpoints between Oregon and California where cars are turned away from crossing state lines due to emissions. In fact, that would probably violate federal free travel laws which would supercede any stupid law like that.

    Next, consider the source. Is this person trustworthy? Did they provide ample citations to reputable journalistic outlets that verified the factuality of the claims? If not, they may be trying to deceive you with falsehoods or have an ulterior motive for misrepresenting the facts. At best they are repeating claims that they’ve heard from others and anything they report on should be taken with a grain of salt.

    This post doesn’t hold up to the slightest amount of scrutiny, but people get fooled every day by crap like this. My advice is that if you hear something that sounds outrageous or too good to be true, stop and think carefully about it for a few minutes, or maybe just wait for another source to report it. Saves you a lot of stress and protects you from endlessly doomscrolling.

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      58
      ·
      edit-2
      17 hours ago

      A friend of mine posted something on Facebook (reposted from a local list in Arizona) claiming that two people were knocking on doors and beating up people, and one woman was in the hospital as a result. Pictures of the perpetrators and everything.

      Something felt off, so I did a quick search on their names. And I found an article from some city in Texas where the same rumor had been circulating about that area. The article clarified that the two people had committed some crimes several years ago and were caught, tried, and convicted already.

      So someone took one of these, changed the name of the area, and posted it to the local list. Why do people do this? A form of stochastic terrorism maybe?

      Edit - I can’t find the post (I think my friend deleted it), but I did still have a tab open with the article about it.

      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        10 hours ago

        Where I live I mostly see this done to support the narrative that immigrants are bad, that you can’t trust traditional media, and that you should be voting for the local fascist party.

        Afaik the place names and date are not changed here, I suspect because that would make the perpetrators criminally liable. Instead they work by omission: take a many years old crime, don’t mention the date but instead post it on facebook as if it only recently happened, in that post question why the media isn’t mentioning this event or how the non-fascist politicians could let things get this much out of control, and then boost the post with help from others in the telegram group so that it reaches a wider audience.

      • WamGams@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        35
        ·
        19 hours ago

        I have noticed this as well. Back during the early facebook years, a “news” outlet would just generate content by posting stories like “Greenville ranked as the city with highest crime rate” every week or so.

        Everybody on my facebook feed would go crazy saying things like “I always knew that town was dangerous, but to hear it outranks New York? TERRIFYING!”

        Only issue is that this outlet would have 50 different URLs for the article, all giving a city in a different state (always an immigrant heavy suburb) and those articles would be appear around facebook and nobody would know the wiser.

        It costs almost nothing for them to rewrite the world and your perspective about it. The granularity they are now capable of should give us pause.

        • limelight79@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          18 hours ago

          Interesting. This one didn’t include a link to an article, just fear mongering.

          The person that posted it deleted it after my comment, I think. I’ll check.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        19 hours ago

        I assume the people in the picture were “melanin enriched”? There you have your answer.

        It’s a shame that you can’t know when seeing such posts if the person resharing it has good intentions or not. “Don’t open your door for strangers” is often good advice after all.

    • leftytighty@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      67
      ·
      20 hours ago

      The firetrucks were allowed through but Haitian immigrants ate them!

      You expect too much from these people, and an increasing share of them aren’t genuine people at all.

      • superkret@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        17 hours ago

        The firetrucks were allowed through but Haitian immigrants ate them!

        That sounds reasonable and matches what the Big Red Squid told me on TV after last nights meth binge.

    • valtia@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      20 hours ago

      “who stopped them?”. There are no checkpoints between Oregon and California

      … actually, there are checkpoints along every major roadway into California that do check incoming vehicles, mostly to find and prevent invasive species from entering the state and affecting the agricultural industry, and more broadly to protect the environmental systems in California. There have, in fact, been legal challenges against these checkpoints for violating travel laws, but the checkpoints have remained. They’ve also been used to seize non-agricultural items like weed, weapons smuggling, etc. so emissions standards checking isn’t completely out of the realm.

      Obviously, she’s lying and she doesn’t know any of this either anyway. But there are checkpoints to enter California.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_Stations

      • Captain_CapsLock@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        20 hours ago

        I can’t speak for all of them, but the I5 border station near the Oregon border hasn’t even been manned in several years. This gal is so full of shit.

        • Krauerking
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          37 minutes ago

          Why bother protecting your agriculture with sensible checks when their is profit to make and they are just getting in the way, right?

        • CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          18 hours ago

          The station on Highway 97 has someone there, they’ve always just waved me through and said “have a nice day” i think they stop and inspect the agricultural trucks that go through there, tho.

      • Trilobite@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        19 hours ago

        I go through one all the time there has not been anyone there stopping people for years now

      • Furbag@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        20 hours ago

        Yeah, you’re right, but you also conveniently cut out the second half of my sentence where I specifically mentioned being turned away for emissions. Context matters.

        • Trilobite@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          19 hours ago

          As long as a car is registered and insured they have the right to drive in any state

    • odelik@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      20 hours ago

      Additionally, Washington, Oregon, California, and BC (this one has to have some sort of international limitations) have a climate pact with eachother to adopt emission and climate policies set by the other states/province.

      Out of all the states that CA would have emissions issues with, OR would not be one of them.

    • sola@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Teaching critical thinking skills it not a solution. People are not getting fooled, they want to believe it, it fills an emotional need.

      Neo-liberal solutions to societal issues focusing on individuals has been a complete disaster. It is basically victim blaming and doesn’t actually scale in many circumstances.

      Eg. High house prices; Victims fault for not working harder and saving more. Neo-liberal solution: Work longer, spend way less. Outcome at scale: Economy crashes due to low spending.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        16 hours ago

        I agree with the rest, but

        Teaching critical thinking skills it not a solution. People are not getting fooled, they want to believe it, it fills an emotional need.

        Yes. Properly taught critical thinking overrides the emotional thinking. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t anymore then animals.

        • sola@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          17 hours ago

          That’s the thing, people don’t want to. Critical thinking for one it takes more physical energy, which is a impediment. People want to belong as it can be very difficult to thrive being excluded, so there can be an advantage to just go along with the dominate narrative. Hence why we are getting a onslaught of propaganda like this twitter post.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Sometimes I wonder how much better the world could be if I had the power to snap my fingers and everybody on the planet knows that confirmation bias exists and it’s a big deal.