I had to delete my Reddit account because I have a tendency to try to hard to correct or educate people, and after a while you learn that the orange mail icon is never someone saying "Thank you for correcting me", but usually someone flaming you, and it made me unnecessarily stressed. I try to stay off Facebook for the same reason, 50% of my feed is friends/friends-of-friends sharing ignorant or false posts. Only on HN and a few other small communities do I actually take the time to do write something, because more often than not I get pleasant responses, or at least an intelligent discourse in return.

This year, I've started something new though. Whenever I see something like this, I basically begin writing my own essay of a response, and then try to spot all the places trolls or other readers could tear it apart, point out bias, or points where my knowledge is lacking (if I can't elaborate on something further than the sentences few sentences in the essay, I probably don't understand it well enough to be speaking about it in the first place). And I either write a rebuttal, or rewrite it into the original essay, all while researching and providing sources along the way.

Then I save it to a folder on my computer, and don't post it anywhere, or sometimes just delete the whole thing. I learn a lot, improve my writing a little, and neither party can get angry.

A recent example, multiple friends of mine shared an image on Facebook, with text like "Isn't it bullsh^$t that you can be arrested and your only charge is resisting arrest?!". I knew this wasn't true, but didn't know the specifics as to why. I learned that Florida doesn't have a charge simply called resisting arrest, but instead "843.02 Resisting officer without violence to his or her person", which makes sense and sounds much more reasonable as a sole charge. Also, you don't have to be resisting your own arrest, so you could be guilty of only a "resisting arrest"-like charge if you resist someone else's arrest :P