Recently, my better half got a legitimate looking text, telling him UPS was holding a package for him and he needed to contact them at the link provided.

I asked to see the text and at first glance it looked legit, but there were definite signs he was being phished.

We didn't order anything recently that required UPS.

The text didn't provide a tracking number. A company that runs by tracking is always going to give you a tracking number.

The link had the standard UPS.com url, only with a lot more letters after it.

I told Greg to delete it.  

I am infamous for not trusting the internet. 

Evey so often, Greg reads me some Facebook post that pushes his buttons. I keep telling him it's deliberate. Someone or some AI is deliberating baiting people to interact. My hunch is it's AI, accumulating data on what spurs people to comment. 

AI survives on accumulation and collation. If you feed it anywhere online, it remembers and reallocates as needed. Methinks, it is ultimately for nefarious purposes.

If it's on social media and not an original post from one of my friends, I can almost assure you it's a fabricated post. Sadly, even friends can be led astray too. That's why I said it has to be a post originating from them, not something parroted from someone else.

The same goes for full articles. If you read an article and it doesn't answer the most basic of journalistic questions, ie, Who, What, Where, When, Why (and sometimes How), it's either extremely poorly written, or it's written by AI.

When I read a story and it provides me with only vague details, I get suspicious. 

A common thread goes like this: A woman, a child, or an elderly man (someone vulnerable) was accosted, and bystanders, instead of helping, robbed this person. Yet it won't tell me when this happened, what city, or the response from law enforcement. --because honestly, why wouldn't you call the cops?

Facebook is full of these bull crap stories. I dismiss these stories without a second thought. Why waste my time? 

I don't know about you, but I think this kind of manipulation is getting worse. And the most annoying thing of all is that so many people take it as dogma and run with it without ever bothering to question its validity.

If I know you well enough to know your kids' or your pets' names, I know I can trust you. Everyone else gets the side eye of suspicion.

What do you think? Is social media manipulation getting worse? Have you ever been duped by misinformation? 

 

 

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