You shouldn't.

how we screwed almost the whole apple community

I remember, way back in the early 90's I think, showing the then primitive web to an academic (I may even have been using NCSA Mosaic to do it) and explaining how this new system would soon allow her to find and view any piece of information you wished, how you could pull it down out of the ether. This academic, founded in a world of peer review and the scientific method, furrowed her brow and said to me 'But how do you know for certain any of it is true'?

I didn't have an answer for her at the time. I still don't, really.

Jon

My general position with news items (especially in tech) is 'wait and see'.
More so when Apple are mentioned.
Yes, there's downright fiction masquerading as news, but then there is in the printed press as well. Perhaps the printed medium is a little more rigorous in their fact checking, but maybe they aren't. Hitler's Diaries anyone?

Especially for news, I always treat it as an unconfirmed rumour until "real" media start to report it, they have people who check the sources and confirm stories before running them - or at least they should; there have been many instances of especially American media running with Twitter rumours, only to have to apologise later...

If it comes from the CEO or through a press release, then I will generally accept it as "true in the eye of the company", if it is just an unconfirmed rumour from "sources", then I take it with a large pinch of salt.

This reminds me of when I was working in A&E. A patient came in convinced she had some kind of worm infestation in her body. She was clutching a piece of paper which she had printed off the internet. It stated that there were tiny works that existed, invisible to the naked eye, undetectable by any test or scan. The only solution was some sort of almod extract which she could buy through the website. Misinformation like this can serve to harm the public, give them false hope or potentially harm their health. Which is why I now promote appropriately-backed websites eg patient.co.uk.

I understood the reason behind fictional stories spreading was 'churnalism' - the act of simply regurgitating a story - rather than checking facts and sources first.

If we cannot rely on the news media to do their jobs properly, then there is very little we can actually take at face value. Maybe I'm a little more gullible than most, because I've fallen for plausible but fake stories often enough, or perhaps I'm just a little more honest about being sucked in.

And eventually you end up with stuff like this...

Citogenesis

I didn't realise spiders were literate

for serious business, I tend to believe stuff from reputable sources found through google scholar (AKA online version of papers).
Everything else should be confirmed by a more serious source (paper or online)

Isn't it all a construct by the mind of Bratty?

Mark

I was asked if I believed everything I read the other day by a Sun reader... There's no way to NOT sound like a condescending prick and win that argument. I think people generally accept what they read since somebody actually bothered to publish it!

I think you think wrong when applied to articles on the web, unless it's from an official, trusted source.

Mark

I don't believe you.

Proving your original point wrong. *laugh*

Mark

No, I very deliberately said 'generally accept'

Depends on where I read it.