Dear friends, it has long been my belief that if a person makes certain claims, then the onus is on them to provide reliable, credible evidence which supports their claims.
If you stop and think about it, the very same requirement is imposed on lawyers in a court of law. The fact is that a judge and jury will not be very willing to accepting something as being true, if no evidence is provided to support it by the lawyer. He or she will have a very weak case, and may very well lose the case. Should we be any different, or follow a lower standard, with our online activities?
As many of you will already know, I strive to be very careful regarding what I post on my timeline, and also with what I allow others to comment on my timeline as well.
The truth is that a lot of people say a lot of different things — sometimes very outlandish and crazy things — on the Internet, often without providing any credible evidence whatsoever which supports what they have stated.
What happens next? Well, other people come along, and without any investigation whatsoever on their part to determine if what they are reading is true, they then share it, or copy and paste it somewhere else on the web. The end result is that before you know it, you have another unsubstantiated Internet rumor which has gone wild.
My friends, personally, I don’t want to be a conduit for false or misleading information, and I am sure that you don’t either. Right?
In short, we shouldn’t expect people to believe us just because we say so. That would be dangerous. We need to give them reliable, credible evidence which supports our claims. We need to point them to the sources of our information, so that they can then determine for themselves if what we are saying is true.
To reiterate that last point, it is on each of us to validate what we are saying by pointing our readers to credible sources of information. That is how we can convince them of what we are saying. This is particularly important right now as the online world has been inundated with all kinds of information — including conspiracy theories — regarding COVID-19 and the controversial vaccines. It can be very confusing. That is why you need to verify your facts by pointing us to URLs and giving us credible, original sources.
Folks, this is just the way I roll. Please know that I hold both myself and others to the very same standard. It is called being accountable for what we say, and posting responsibly. I hope you agree.
