Internet. Information or misinformation?
Answers Is the internet good for us? · see how other cities answered →
Is the internet good at spreading information, or misinformation? A Nairobi answer that refuses the premise of the question and then gives a practical test for telling them apart.
“I think both. It’s not one-sided,” he says. What you get depends on what you go looking for: “If you’re more into business, it might give you maybe good prices, or fake. If you’re into gossip, it will give you truth, or maybe not.”
Asked for a time he met misinformation himself, he does not reach for politics. He reaches for a car listing. “You might find somebody selling a car maybe at 1.7, another guy selling the same car maybe at 700,000. So it’s a bit like, okay.” The price spread is the tell.
His advice is one line and it is the whole piece: “Do your research, and know if something is sus or something is real. Don’t just jump into something, because you might jump into it and then find yourself you’ve been conned.”
Filmed by Aziz for a weekly hundred-dollar bounty on poidh, picture it or it didn’t happen, where one question goes out to contributors in several countries in the same week. That format is what One Question grew into.