It’s most noticeable when the topic being discussed is your area of expertise. Then you clearly see what kind of grossly oversimplified or even blatantly false comments get made with so much confidence and upvoted.
I tried to keep this in mind while reading stuff that I’m not an expert in, but that’s hard.
A lot of people would just upvote the first bozo to reply with a confident answer and never bother to check for the full story. Scrolling 3 comments down you’d find someone who actually knows their stuff. I learned to at least read most of the comments before committing any Reddit info to memory as fact.
The “hivemind” ignoring the correct information or even worse, encouraging the wrong information.
Does anyone else remember the whole Boston Bomber fiasco (i.e. We did it, Reddit)?
It’s most noticeable when the topic being discussed is your area of expertise. Then you clearly see what kind of grossly oversimplified or even blatantly false comments get made with so much confidence and upvoted.
I tried to keep this in mind while reading stuff that I’m not an expert in, but that’s hard.
A lot of people would just upvote the first bozo to reply with a confident answer and never bother to check for the full story. Scrolling 3 comments down you’d find someone who actually knows their stuff. I learned to at least read most of the comments before committing any Reddit info to memory as fact.