2024-03-30 10:31:56 +00:00
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#import "template.typ": conf
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#show: doc => conf(
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title: [ An overview on hoaxes ],
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doc,
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2024-03-29 23:01:33 +00:00
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)
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= Introduction
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In recent times, hoaxes have become increasingly prevalent as the
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internet continues to expand and as more people use social media.
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Misinformation is on a rise - though this is information which isn’t
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really new, the current state of things is horrible, and things really
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shouldn’t be the way they are.
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I aim for this to be a brief blog post detailing the effect of hoaxes on
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society, focusing on why they’re so harmful.
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= What exactly is a hoax?
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Put simply, a hoax is made-up information, be it a story or something
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else. Hoaxes are created with the intent of spreading false information - for a immense variety of reasons, from jokes and causing embarrassment
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to provoking politic or social change #footnote[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoax]. I won’t discuss
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the causes of hoaxes further in this blog post.
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= The effect of hoaxes
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Hoaxes can cause significant damage to their targets if formulated
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cleverly. For example:
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#quote(block: true, attribution: "from the Wikipedia 4chan page")[
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The stock price of Apple Inc.~fell significantly in October 2008 after a
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hoax story was submitted to CNN’s user-generated news site iReport.com
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claiming that company CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack.
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The source of the story was traced back to 4chan.
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]
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With the incredible presence of social media in our lives, spreading
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harmful misinformation like that above can be as simple as making a few
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posts - they don’t even need to be very convincing! What makes matters
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worse is how gullible the general population is, even those educated in
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this sort of thing - this shows #emph[just] how much influence the
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internet and it’s contents have on us.
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I would like to clarify that I’m not suggesting that people should avoid
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using the internet to gather information - while its reliability is
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incredibly questionable, the accessibility and openness it provides far
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beats traditional methods of gathering information \(books and such). My
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suggestion is that people should be much more careful with how they
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interpret information on the internet, and perform their due diligence
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in their research into whatever they’re aiming to learn; #strong[people
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should make sure that what they’re reading is accurate before absorbing
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any information] \(here’s your tl;dr).
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That’s about it for this blog post, as it was meant to be a brief way of
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expressing my thoughts on the matter. Thanks for reading!
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