How much can you trust what you find on the web?

John D. Thomas

August 24, 2011

https://www.digitalethics.org/essays/how-much-can-you-trust-what-you-find-web

 "Web of Trust"  

First Impression:

The World Wide Web nowadays has been a lot like real life: you sometimes don't realize that what are you doing is either good for you or could end up bad for you. Constant vigilance is a must nowadays.

Quote: 

"So can anything published online be trusted? That’s like saying can you ever trust anything that the government tells you. The answer: No, you can’t."

Reflection Proper: 

We live in a world full of mystery; a world filled with truths, either half, whole, or not truthful at all. We live in a society where we always try to find trust and bonds with others, but we never realize that we can be played at from time to time. The same goes on the World Wide Web nowadays, i.e. sometimes you don't even realize that the person you are talking to online could be a hacker getting every bit of information out of you such as your personal details and such; or sometimes you don't realize that the website you are clicking contains a virus, and you just realize these sort of things when it's too late for you. The web, as defined by the article, is " a place brilliantly designed for people easily to create new identities for themselves" and frankly, those identities often don't match the ones in reality; for instance: some men posed as lesbian bloggers online or something like in the film "Confessions of a Shopaholic" where the main character, a shopaholic, is posing as an advice columnist who teaches self-control and not to become a shopaholic. Needless to say, the web mostly is full of liars, thus not everything online can't be trusted, which is proven in today's generation otherwise such as fake news, scandals and gossip. However, even if we are to be always living in a world such as this, where the internet or everyone around us has information that is completely honest and accurate or not, we should always take care of ourselves and do constant vigilance every time, or in accordance with the article, should support democracy in accessing information and critiquing it and also correcting especially if it's full of lies or half-truth if we are to create a world where the Web has a lot of accuracy and veracity, and not to mention full-on honesty and harmony.

5 Things Learned From Article: 

1. I learned about the shaky reliability of online information.

2. I learned about the web being a place brilliantly designed for people easily to create new identities for themselves.

3. I learned about the government sometimes shields the truth when it comes to news and reports.

4. I learned that when it comes to information, it takes years or sometimes more than that (decades or centuries even) to set the record straight.

5. I learned that our world is always full of lies and truth, half and whole.

5 Integrative Questions:

1. How does one relate real life when it comes to the reliability of online information?

2. Why do people create online identities that don't match up well as their real selves often?

3. Why does the government always hide the truth from everyone even though one always find a way to get hold of such things, no matter what?
   

4. How come even though there's a lot of information on the Web nowadays, people are not doing much of a thing to set the record straight?

5. How do you know who to trust nowadays especially on the Web?