Almost ten years ago, I maintained a joke Twitter inspired by the Atherton police blotter: @mvpoliceblotter. It was just silly nonsense, until one of the tweets about someone walking into and breaking a store window while watching YouTube on their Google Glass got retweeted by an ABC 7 reporter. SJ Mercury wrote a story (later retracted). It got a ton of attention, even though your can't even watch YouTube on a Google Glass. There was no broken window. The was zero evidence except for two sentences on Twitter. Nobody did any fact checking whatsoever.
It's not a new problem, but it definitely feels like it's gotten worse.
Almost ten years ago, I maintained a joke Twitter inspired by the Atherton police blotter: @mvpoliceblotter. It was just silly nonsense, until one of the tweets about someone walking into and breaking a store window while watching YouTube on their Google Glass got retweeted by an ABC 7 reporter. SJ Mercury wrote a story (later retracted). It got a ton of attention, even though your can't even watch YouTube on a Google Glass. There was no broken window. The was zero evidence except for two sentences on Twitter. Nobody did any fact checking whatsoever.
It's not a new problem, but it definitely feels like it's gotten worse.