Let's talk about fake news.

Fake news is a form of misuse of information, and Rubin and Tandoc consider these to be variants of fake news;

Clickbait

Propaganda

Satire or parody

Sloppy journalism

Misleading Headlines

Slanted or Biased News

I would argue that bar satire this news article is guilty of all five forms of fake news.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/02/dont-say-gay-florida-week-in-patriarch

The writer of this news article is demonstrating what can also be seen in social media posts which I will show below. She is displaying wilful ignorance that is misleading to an uninformed reader.

The article provides no attempt at linking to the bill itself, the writer also backs up her claims with other controversial political topics in order to further catastrophise things. Despite the Guardian author having reliability due to her using her real name and face and being published in the Guardian, the article is riddled with personal feelings and biases toward Christians and other groups. I have no doubt that this article is intentionally misleading.

Her fear of indoctrination of children with Christianity is an opinion she is entitled to, however, one could suggest that the most pervasive form of indoctrination at hand is the mindless scrolling on the vacuum of social media, and consuming everything you come across uncritically and without question.

I will discuss the virality of the #dontsaygaybill and why I perceive this particular phrasing, and the propaganda associated with it, to be misleading and/or false.

However, a serious negative result of widespread controversial issues is fear-mongering. Individuals use social media and have become accustomed to a certain lack of accountability attached to the posts they share and the ideology they promote.

I will attach below the Bill that is being referred to.

I will attach below an example of the posts talking about the #dontsaygaybill.

As you can see, the very real panic that people are in, is snowballing due to the severity of the misinformation.

For example; the hyperbolic language regarding the stripping of human rights and equality being revoked puts people in a panic and forms a type of echo-chamber where they are constantly reaffirming their views instead of stepping outside of the platform and doing some research.

Now don't get me wrong, if you read the bill, understand it and take issue with it. You are well within your right to say so and take a stance, however, the sheer volume of post-truth being spread is concerning. As you can see commenter @nicolehuttner21 has been so immersed in social media that she actually believes the name of it is the #dontsaygaybill.

What I believe is most imperative about this bill and what we can learn from this blog post is how vital it is to be able to substantiate your claims and base them on real evidence. Higgins states it best; "don't bother me with facts' has become a political stance not a punchline".

To conclude no matter what you think belongs in the classroom, or where your political affiliations lie. We should all have the faculties of logic to be able to discern what is being dramatised and be encouraged to form opinions based on our own research on any given topic.

I apologize for being salty all the time, but I really do not like misinformation because I'm often enough the victim of traveled-down misinformation and, even worse, see the indifference and what it does. We're living on a planet getting hotter and less habitable due to misinformation, indifference and greed and I just don't think it's harmless to not give a shit. I see people being unable to accept (!) that almost every topic is actually not simple and how the denial of complexity and with it the impossibility of knowing everything translating itself into behaviors of ridicule, fear and hatred or everyone seeing themselves exempt from responsibility. I love hilarious exaggeration, seeing things from different angles and fiction and speculation is one of the greatest things that human can do. But wilfully or for money spreading falsehoods or suggesting something is simple if just everyone falls in line makes me bristle. Wilful ignorance to facts or saying that something isn't important just because oneself cannot grasp the implications is something I cannot tolerate. Also: It's OK to not care about something, nobody can care about everything. But why demonstrate it? Why say it? This discourages some people by way of social mechanics to care and to share information and tells liars with a purpose that their lies go unnoticed, putting more burden on the backs of the few who care. Anyway. I'll saltily put information and perspective on things that might otherwise slip by or be tolerated and it might look weird and overzealous, but I cannot stand the thought of someone getting hurt at the end of the line of that. And I'm sorry for grumping it up, but I think ignorance is one of the greatest evils in a world where almost every authority tries to either trick you into doing something or keep you ignorant because they think that's safer for them or you.

[Rant] Christian Universities in America are Brainwashing Machines -- The Way they Spread Blatantly False Misinformation, Fallacies, and Misrepresent other Groups is Unethical via /r/atheism

Submitted March 28, 2017 at 06:02AM by TheOldEskimo (Via reddit http://ift.tt/2ncGPnd) [Rant] Christian Universities in America are Brainwashing Machines -- The Way they Spread Blatantly False Misinformation, Fallacies, and Misrepresent other Groups is Unethical

I know, I know -- What else is new? Religious groups indoctrinating their youth? What a surprise.

Of course as I’m sure you know, this kind of thing is hardly limited to Christian Universities (Jesus Camps, Sunday School, Misinformation from Family, etc), but as a Senior at one such institution, I am furious about it.

Naturally, and as you would expect, we’re required to take a series of Christian Apologetics courses.

As you might also expect, these courses aren’t conversations, they’re presentations.

That is to say, when the PhDs in front of the class feed you a series of blatant fallacies that have been thoroughly and repeatedly documented for hundreds of years and patently false lies that a simple Google search or look outside the Christian bubble would reveal, the floor’s not exactly open to raise your hand and point out their error. Maybe you could once. Maybe you could twice. But the truth of it is, you’d be raising your hand to explain why what they’re saying plainly doesn’t make any sense or hold up any kind of scrutiny for practically every single point they make. That, and take my word from experience, they’ll stop calling on you and your class reputation gets pretty bad.

4 Years of content packed apologetics courses each semester. Piles and piles of fallacious Christian literature. Mountains of fallacies and blatant misinformation the size of Mars.

For the Christian Apologetics course I’m enrolled in currently, we have something like 10 different books (a couple hundred pages each).

Every class is a lecture; a steady stream of arguments or “archaeological evidence” where the sheer volume of bullshit that’s shoveled on top of you makes it impossible to address even a fraction of the issues present in the logic or claims their making.

There’s just so much that you’re bound to come across something nonsensical that you don’t even understand much less know how to debunk on the spot.

I was a Christian for most of my life. Everyone I know are Christians. The truth of the matter is that this level of indoctrination is, generally speaking, remarkably effective.

The overwhelming majority of people at this University are already Christians. If they’re not, then they tend to be on the fence from what I’ve seen (by on the fence, I mean they wouldn’t even consider any other religions, but they think Christianity may be true). For many people, attending these courses, even if they don’t understand everything or remember it all, the effect ends up being very convincing to them.

You’re in an environment surrounded by people who look at you like you’re an idiot if you don’t think Christianity is true. Add to that that “smart” people -- people with PhDs -- people who appear to have it all figured out and have studied it all to death and who appear to have all the answers and arguments and evidence worked out (your profs with agendas) -- instruct you for 4 years about the truthfulness of Christianity and why rejecting it must be wilful ignorance because the truth of it is just so obvious.

What you’re left with is a majority of people that eat it up. They buy into it. They think their religion is rational and they’re convinced that they have mountains of evidence to support their belief.

They are duped.

It all just makes me so angry. Watching my peers buy into it all boils my blood. The fact that when it does come up, no one will listen to me and many people think I’m “evil” for god’s sake. Seeing my professors espouse claims I know to be demonstrably false infuriates me.

I just want to stand up and scream at them all the things I know they’re getting wrong or that simply don’t logically make sense.

One of the worse things that is done in these courses is the vilification and misrepresentation of other beliefs and positions.

Atheism? Misrepresented and twisted up -- explained as something it’s not and the group vilified.

Religious Pluralism? Misrepresented -- explained as something it’s not.

Other Religions? Misrepresented -- explained as things they’re not.

Anyone who does not think Christianity is true is vilified and made to appear simply selfish and sinful and as someone who rejected the one true god Yahweh wilfully (whose existence and truth is extremely extremely obvious -- obvious enough for anybody anywhere to tell) and as someone deserving of eternal damnation and suffering.

So I sit in class. And my brain hurts. I and hope beyond hope that the people around me couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to buy into this crap.

But then I am filled with despair because I know with great confidence that the overwhelming majority of them do and it just makes me so frustrated to see that.

Perhaps you think I’m wrong about that, but in so far as I’ve been able to tell these past years, I’m not.

Brainwashing machines like these appear to me to be largely effective. It seems to me that deconverts like myself are the exception to the rule and I find that very discouraging.

All this to say, I’ve grown to hate religion with everything I have in my time here. I see how it twisted me up in the past. I see how it fooled me and how institutions like this fool others. I go to class, and it’s become painful for me.

TL;DR: My Christian University is not intellectually honest with respect to their religious content. Instead of being honest about how they concluded their religion is true and about differing positions, they blatantly lie by spreading misinformation and fallacies while horrendously misrepresenting the positions of other groups. This is unethical, and it's indoctrination. What makes it worse is that it tends to be effective.