Internet: truth or misinformation? A Nigerian answer.
Answers Is the internet good for us? · see how other cities answered →
A second Nigerian answer to the week’s bounty-board question, is the internet good for spreading truth or misinformation, from someone who has watched both sides of it work.
“I would honestly think that it’s a tool for both,” he begins, and the first half of his answer is the scams: “There’s scammers on all parts of the internet, every little nook and cranny and corner.” The Facebook version is the one everybody has seen, the really nice iPhone for 17k that ends with somebody running away with your money. But the same platform ships the resistance. “at the same time I feel like there’s unequal number of people who are debunking these scams online,” warning you off the shady deal before you take it.
He widens it to the campaigns, “politically motivated reasons,” a competitor trying to one-up you in your own vertical, sales, whatever it is, and grants that this makes the internet a tool for misinformation and disinformation. Then the counterweight again: “there’s still corners of the internet where you can actually find the real truth.”
He does not land on one side, and says so. Ninety seconds, filmed for the We Them Media field network in Nigeria and commissioned through the poidh bounty board; the reporter does not give a name on tape.