LazyTruth: Something That Will Finally Stop Your Crazy Uncle From Sending You RW email chains...

[brooklynite]

The Atlantic:

As you have probably heard by now, word has it that our radical Muslim president is doing all sorts of terrible things to our country! He's gotten rid of our National Christmas Tree, abolished the National Day of Prayer, and put the family's dog, Bo, on his own airplane all to himself.

No? Then you must not have some distant (or close!) relation who loves to forward, forward, forward, all the live-long day. But for the rest of us, whose inboxes' factual sanctity is under constant assault, there's LazyTruth, a new tool from Matt Stempeck and his team at MIT's Media Lab.

LazyTruth is a plug-in for Chrome that automatically scans email for information that FactCheck.org and Politifact have deemed false. If something doesn't check out, it'll provide a few words of correction and a link to where you can find out more. You can then easily pass that verified information on to the email's sender. Down the road Stempeck plans to add more kinds of rumors to LazyTruth's filter -- urban myths, hoaxes, false security threats, etc. -- but for now the tool is limited to political tall tales.



"Put simply," Stempeck explained over email (all of which checked out), "LazyTruth is a bridge between low quality information (chain emails) and high quality information (the research outlets that debunk chain emails)." By putting the fact-checking right in your inbox with the forwarded junk, LazyTruth reduces the friction (catch-all phrase for time and effort) between you and a politely worded correction.

Not that they'll believe you of course...

[navarth]

1. that is AWESOME

going there right now. I don't mind my Uncle's stuff so much, but I have some friends.......oh yeah.

[Xyzse]

2. Wah? Thanks for the information

I may have to utilize this at some point.

[Old Codger]

3. Needed

For Firefox or Thunderbird

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Note to "LazyTruth" ...

I would consider this plug-in if rather than "automatically scans email for information that FactCheck.org and Politifact have deemed false. If something doesn't check out, it'll provide a few words of correction and a link to where you can find out more", the system would bounce the bogus e-mail back to the sender (and everyone on the CC list) ... It could just provide me a note indicating that it did so.

[alittlelark]

6. That was my 1st thought as well!

[1StrongBlackMan]

8. Yeah ...

because I really don't want to read the bogus e-mail ... and would prefer that it not even reach my mail-box (yeah, I know that the system might bounce something I might want to see, but ...)

[wtmusic]

12. +1

[cui bono]

30. Better yet, it should automatically reply with the corrections.

And including a note saying, "Your intended recipient did not receive this email due to its inaccuracies noted below. Please correct the information before sending again. Thank you."

[Scuba]

31. Make that an option, preferably with some granularity ...

... I'd like to be able to identify particular contacts to automatically bounce, and others that would require me to take an action before bouncing.

My crazy cousin in one thing, my boss quite another.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

5. Love that Media Lab (founded by the better of the two Negroponte brothers)

[InsultComicDog]

7. if it would also check Snopes

it would be worth having

[hobbit709]

9. I stopped getting crazy chain emails after I started to "Reply All" with a link to snopes.

[Maeve]

10. Yeah, that worked for me, too!

They can be trained!

[cyberpj]

18. Me too. Works like a charm. nt

[Arkansas Granny]

21. I did the same and it had the same results.

That proves to me that they don't want to hear the truth. They only want to hear the kind of garbage that reinforces what they want to believe.

[kentauros]

25. Although you could stretch out their aggravation

by deleting the original email addy in the "Reply All" so only the Cc-ed people get your reply. Let them stew and complain to the originator of the email all whilst he/she is oblivious to your tactics

[BainsBane]

11. Thankfully, I don't have a crazy uncle

But my sister could use this for her in-laws.

[GatorLarry]

13. Thanks!

Not that they'll read or consider anything that comes from outside their Faux Noise universe.

I had to actually set-up a special folder for one "friend" who could send all sorts of hate-filled, racist anti-Obama crap . . . but when I sent him one thing he was furious and didn't want to read any more "liberal garbage."

LOL!

[treestar]

24. Welcome to DU!

yes, that's often their attitude! Double standards every time!

[MineralMan]

14. All of my right-wing relatives' emails go

into my Spam folder. I look at the titles. If it's important, I'll read it, if not, off to the null device with them.

[drm604]

15. That's great, IF you use Chrome, and IF you use a gmail address.

Anyone else (the vast majority of users) can't use this.

[kentauros]

26. I noticed that, too.

While I have a gmail address, it's not my primary email address. And I'll never use Chrome.

So, where's the Opera plugin for this?

[valerief]

16. How cool is that!!!! nt

[Populist_Prole]

17. What a great idea. A bit late in my case, but I'll keep it in mind

My VERY right wing and very push father used to flood my inbox with an average of about 5 right-wing forwards per day. I dealt with most of them via having messages containing certain words to the delete file.

Get this though: I asked him to take me off his political forward list: And he actually did! That's so unlike him.

If he starts again I'm going to use that add-on.

[louis-t]

19. The inventor will make millions.

Great idea!

[drm604]

33. It's free.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

20. that fact-based comminity.....

They're so smart!

[felix_numinous]

22. This rocks!

[coeur_de_lion]

23. Awesome n/t

[ohheckyeah]

27. So, the addon can read your emails?

No thanks.

[Blue4Texas]

28. This is fabulous!

Fact check 24/7 to those wasting my time that must still be exposed

[LTR]

29. Does it work on Facebook?

Nice little tool there. Might have to migrate even faster from Firefox.

[cui bono]

32. In reality, it needs to be something on THEIR computer so it corrects before it sends. n/t

[liberalla]

34. "LazyTruth is a plug-in for Chrome that automatically scans email for information..."

I don't like the sound of that. No thank you.

I'd rather be able to submit specific emails for their scan to inspect, but to give them carte blanche to scan all my email is reaching too far.

[eridani]

35. Add this essential item to your anti-RWNJ toolkit--

Reply All. Don't miss the chance to go after your RWNJ's whole contact list.