erin mccann |Verified account

The thing about momo this week and people trying be all "hey I'm just reporting here" (looking at you local tv) is that it shows how ridiculously unprepared we are to deal with misinformation and the noise surrounding it ~even now~ when we've spent years talking about it.

Fact checks and can debunks help, but only for people who seek them out, which few people do.

Some busy parent isn't going to hear about Momo on the local tv news and think "gosh, i'd better check snopes." No, they're going to hear it in the background, internalize it witha shrug, and go on about their night.

Political disinformation, crap like Momo, it's all the same thing, and it prays on human nature, with a little shove from some trolls from time to time, and, in general, we still don't know how to actually combat it on a daily basis, in any meaningful way.

Momo IS disinformation. It traveled the same paths, relied on the same human behaviors. Think about how it got reported, how powerless folks were to stop the content machine once it kicked in, and imagine that for even more important subjects.