The problem is the flow of all this goes something like.
1) A friend of hers posts something factually incorrect about COVID or lockdowns.
2) My wife posts a carefully worded and cited response.
3) Four or five people react with laugh or angry emojis.
4) someone weighs in and tells my wife how stupid and dumb she is, and how she is completely wrong. They often say this in a very nasty way.
5) She responds in a firm but not rude way that she believes they are wrong. She cites sources.
6) This person never responds again, and drops off.
7) A new person weighs in, generally rudely, making ad hominem attacks about her weight or whatever else they can.
8) She argues with them as well, never personally attacking them. She focuses on facts and statistics.
9) Over the course of hours she starts to accumulate likes and a significant number of people thumbs up her responses despite not saying anything.
I don’t know how she manages it, honestly. I can’t argue like this at all, it’s completely draining. She likes to think that because the threads are so active that hundreds of people are watching and she’s helping to change minds to think more rationally. But it’s hard to know for sure, and I don’t think most people have the psychological wherewithal that she has to deal with how abrasive and rude all these people are to her.
> 3) Four or five people react with laugh or angry emojis.
> 4) someone weighs in and tells my wife how stupid and dumb she is, and how she is completely wrong. They often say this in a very nasty way.
> 5) She responds in a firm but not rude way that she believes they are wrong. She cites sources.
> 6) This person never responds again, and drops off.
Happens to me as well in other forums.
I have decided I'm not doing it for those people, but rather for those who would otherwise read the post, see it was uncontested and think "therefore it must be true".
Why do you think I have the time to check my friend's post for disinformation? Yes I can be skeptical of it but sometimes it's hard to decipher that especially when it may confirm to your own biases.
I don’t think there is a lot of radical strategy needed here - just a lot of hard work and vigilance.
When you see misinformation, take the effort to call it out, and hope that your civility and reasonableness win over the silent audience.
Easier said than done when dealing with echo-chamber communities, but those communities have to spill out into your own world at some point, and I guess that’s the point to tackle it.