Social media at its worst

One of the stories that crossed my path this morning came from the Toronto Sun.

Ontario education workers launch work-to-rule campaign

Of course, I wanted to read it. I read all kinds of education stories and I didn’t really know what to expect this time. The Toronto Sun isn’t always all that friendly towards education. I did find that the story seemed to really cover just the facts and wasn’t an editorial piece.

Those that are on work to rule are members of CUPE and they represent “maintenance, clerical and educational assistants”. The original story got all that correct. It also reported on the actions of the TDSB in contacting parents.

The picture that was included at the top of the story was interesting.

Anyway, I was about to move on but thought I would just check out the comments before moving. Oh boy!

Somehow, the group of “Ontario education workers” became “janitors”. Then, the comments turned nasty towards them.

The newspaper uses a Facebook plugin to allow people to comment on things. In the midst were some legitimate Facebook users expressing their opinions. That certainly is their right and being open and transparent legitimizes their thoughts.

However, that’s not the only type of comment generator and that’s where I draw the line. Some of the accounts have names but don’t link back to a legitimate account. Some are even worse without including even an image but that doesn’t stop them fire firing off their missives using the fact that they can’t be accountable for them. Remember how we feel about people with Twitter egg accounts?

They don’t get any credibility with me but I can’t help but at least skimming over their thoughts. I have to wonder if they would use that language if you were talking face to face with them.

But, what does it say that there isn’t someone who is hired to check the validity of the poster and delete any message that they create? Or use the utility or some other one to ensure that there’s at least a genuine person behind the comments?

It seems to me that’s the high road and takes a stand on “fake” or “unverified” news.

And related to this – FUREY: Facebook ‘fact check’ censors Sun column critiquing Liberals