Thursday, November 27, 2008

Hoax-Slayer

The internet contains a wealth of information. As the usual tagline says, “everything is at the tip of your fingertips”. You can literally type a word in the google, click enter and feast on the array of hits that will come up.

However, one can’t help but wonder about the quality of the information that can be derived from the internet.

My very recent online discovery is this website that collates internet hoaxes (usually perpetrated through email) and separates the real from the bogus ones. Just seeing the list of hoaxes on the sidebar made me shake my head – and these were just the general categories. As I clicked on the different links, I saw some that I have received in my own inbox – about viruses, chain letters, you’ve-won-millions-of-moolah-scams and even those warnings against modus operandi of criminal minds that actually made me a trifle scared.

This made me think about filtration of information from the internet. Is there a way for the internet to filter its information so that users will receive only those that are real? If there is, do we want this kind of innovation? Personally, I think there’s value to human discernment and more so, to its exercise by receipt of the intermittent hoax in your email.

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