Reading Response: "Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites, and Other Spurious Information on the Internet"

The reading was focusing on all types of information that is misleading over the internet. In the first few pages of the reading it was talking about counterfeit websites. This is one of the major problems with online research; there are so many fake websites out there, which also have very misleading information. Furthermore in the article it talks about the Martin Luther King website, which if you click on any of the materials would lead you to some white supremacist type websites. This is a counterfeit website that people would go to and not find the information that they were looking to research. Another one that was spoken about in the article was the MaKah whaling tribe of Washington. They were given the right to whale by the US government and within days there were sites up that were counterfeit, and lead people to places that talked about how whaling was a terrible act, and how it was unjust. The next major topic that was covered in the article was suspicious websites. These are websites that are more properly classified as hate sites. There are many of these types of sites on the internet. The news is the next part covered in the article. The article talks about how the news can mislead anyone. I believe that this is so true because if people see it on TV or they read it on the internet, then it has to be true. This is completely untrue, and in the article they talk about how in one county they put two hundred orange vests on deer, and anyone that brought an orange vest back got a prize. Well this story was covered by ESPN, and other top news organization, well it was a hoax. The article continues to talk about disinformation, hoaxes, parodies, September 11th hoaxes, and other items dealing with the internet and how misleading it really can be.

I believe that the article was a good read because there are really people out there that do this stuff on a daily basis. I think that the money that people collected in the aftermath of September 11th is ridiculous and should have to be paid back, or given to the victims’ families. I also believe that most of the information on the web is biased in some way or another. I believe that news organizations should have to be set to a standard; they blow many things out of proportion in relation to news and other media that they cover. This was a great article and it really laid out some of the more important ideas of the misleading internet.