What To Do With False Tweets

The good news about social media is that it allows users to share and receive breaking news instantaneously. The bad news about social media is that it allows users to share and receive erroneous news instantaneously. We’ve seen it before, and most recently in the wake of the Tucson shootings. Some well respected news organizations tweeted that Rep. Giffords had died. Here’s a post that talks about how to handle that scenario. Everyone agrees that the information needs to be corrected, but the debate is over whether the erroneous tweet should be “scrubbed” – that is, removed entirely, or merely corrected. I like the suggestion in the post that Twitter provide a “correction” feature. That seems like a practical solution to a real problem. Of course this sort of thing has happened before – check out this link at about the 4:15 mark.