I often see my uncle who lives a somewhat secluded life in Tucson posting about incorrect information on rights and regulations being changed on various social media sites. The most recent one was about Facebook. Oddly enough I had just seen some friends of mine posting this exact same typed up memo but they just interchanged the name on it to Instagram. However, the post said something to the effect of Facebook changing their “rules” where they can begin using your photos in court cases of litigation against you. It also read that in order to prevent this from happening you would have to copy and paste that post onto your own page. I have seen various hoaxes posted by him before, but I knew this time because I have done previous research about this posting on Instagram, that this was absolutely false.
I kept in mind that I have learned in this course not to attack or make anyone feel judged when approaching them about their spreading of hoaxes or misinformation. I also wanted to take into consideration that he is of opposite religious and political standing from myself and to be sure I kept the conversation very factual and on topic.
So, I went ahead and did some research on the hoax and found a post by Above the Law and CNN to first show him. I began by explaining that this hoax he posted about actually dates back to 2012 and is quite commonly shared around about every few years because it seems like it could be legitimate. I let him know that it was as well on Instagram and has been covered by various news outlets, one being CNN. He seemed to take all of this information well and told me as well that he will Google it next time to be safe.
I also showed him an article from Snopes I found that states even if you were to make a posting about you declaring your rights on your page, you already signed the terms and conditions anyhow. So that in the future if he were to see posts similar to this one, he would know that sharing it makes no difference.
It was actually quite rewarding to see his reaction that he hadn’t thought this deep into the matter, but that what I had said made complete sense. He thanked me at the end of our civil conversation and even made a post bragging about his “college educated niece teaching him to not be a dummy.”
