Misinformation doesn’t become acceptable just because it targets something you hate
Ok so something I’ve noticed recently is that a lot of people do not actually care about misinformation as a principle but whether it is helping their side.
A good example is the recent discussion around those online communities where men were sharing advice and content about manipulating, drugging, and assaulting women. The underlying story is real and serious. CNN’s investigation was about genuinely disgusting spaces and material connected to them. But once the story started spreading online, people began repeating a much sloppier version of it.
I keep seeing people talk as if there were “64 million men” in some single community which does not seem to be what was actually reported. The number being passed around was tied to site traffic or visits, not 64 million identified members of one organised group.
What bothers me is how quickly people stop caring about accuracy when the target is something they already hate. Normally people will talk endlessly about media literacy, dangerous misinformation, fact-checking, and not spreading falsehoods. Then a story appears about a group they find vile, and suddenly exaggeration is treated as fine because it feels emotionally true and I don’t think that standard works.
If something is genuinely evil, harmful, or dangerous, then it should be criticised accurately. You should not need to inflate numbers, blur details, or repeat false claims to make the point land. All that does is make the discussion worse. It gives people an easy way to dismiss legitimate reporting by pointing to the parts that were distorted which is the part people keep missing.
Correcting bad information is not the same as defending the people being talked about. Those are two different things. Saying “that number is wrong” is not the same as saying “this problem is fake.” But online, people constantly collapse those two things together because they are more interested in moral performance than basic honesty.
I think a lot of people only oppose misinformation when it benefits people they disagree with. When misinformation is aimed at a bad group, or a group they already resent, they suddenly become far more relaxed about it. At that point they are just defending a version of truth that flatters their existing bias I think that is a bad habit no matter who the target is...