#import "template.typ": conf
#show: doc => conf(
  title: [ An overview on hoaxes ],
  doc,
)

= Introduction
In recent times, hoaxes have become increasingly prevalent as the
internet continues to expand and as more people use social media.
Misinformation is on a rise - though this is information which isn’t
really new, the current state of things is horrible, and things really
shouldn’t be the way they are.

I aim for this to be a brief blog post detailing the effect of hoaxes on
society, focusing on why they’re so harmful.

= What exactly is a hoax?
Put simply, a hoax is made-up information, be it a story or something
else. Hoaxes are created with the intent of spreading false information - for a immense variety of reasons, from jokes and causing embarrassment
to provoking politic or social change #footnote[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoax]. I won’t discuss
the causes of hoaxes further in this blog post.

= The effect of hoaxes
Hoaxes can cause significant damage to their targets if formulated
cleverly. For example:

#quote(block: true, attribution: "from the Wikipedia 4chan page")[
The stock price of Apple Inc.~fell significantly in October 2008 after a
hoax story was submitted to CNN’s user-generated news site iReport.com
claiming that company CEO <NAME> had suffered a major heart attack.
The source of the story was traced back to 4chan.
]

With the incredible presence of social media in our lives, spreading
harmful misinformation like that above can be as simple as making a few
posts - they don’t even need to be very convincing! What makes matters
worse is how gullible the general population is, even those educated in
this sort of thing - this shows #emph[just] how much influence the
internet and it’s contents have on us.

I would like to clarify that I’m not suggesting that people should avoid
using the internet to gather information - while its reliability is
incredibly questionable, the accessibility and openness it provides far
beats traditional methods of gathering information \(books and such). My
suggestion is that people should be much more careful with how they
interpret information on the internet, and perform their due diligence
in their research into whatever they’re aiming to learn; #strong[people
should make sure that what they’re reading is accurate before absorbing
any information] \(here’s your tl;dr).

That’s about it for this blog post, as it was meant to be a brief way of
expressing my thoughts on the matter. Thanks for reading!
