Internet Trolling and Misinformation

• Two important things I learned about in this week’s topic is that trolling and misinformation is bad and there is no way around it but to minimize it. Pew research center states that, “Things will stay bad because to troll is human.” Humans are faulty by nature and with the freedom of speech they may spread their opinions as they please, it could blatantly wrong or just incorrect based off of belief. The many avenues to dish out curated information makes it impossible to stop the spread of misinformation. I think that trolls can be stopped though because they are normally hiding behind fake pages.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I have experienced online harassment and trolling as well as my friends. Being a college athlete at a high ranked school we receive a lot of national attention and fans can share their opinions on various media platforms. The best way to avoid it or address it when it happens to you is to simply ignore it. If you are direct messaged by someone who has something negative to say just delete it and go about your day. Most apps today have privacy options to not allow certain people to talk to you on the platforms.

• Social media platforms that I like to use such as facebook are limiting trolling by built in fact checkers. When something is posted from a troll it may alert you that this post may have the contents of misinformation. Instagram on the other hand has not limited trolling much with the excess amount of bots or fake pages that spam comments on posts. In my search for credible information I only looked for verified accounts. On social media platforms verified account are proven to be who they say they are. Though they can mislead people it is the best way to be accurate information.