Reading Report #5

Upon reading the reserves article “Web Hoaxes, Counterfeit Sites and Other Spurious Information on the Web”, by Paul S. Piper, I really began to second-guess my primary information gathering source. The author of this piece describes many different types of false websites such as hoaxes, counterfeit sites, misinformation, fictitious sites, parodies, spoofs, and hacks. I never realized just how many different types of lies there were but Piper did an excellent job of explaining how to distinguish between the many fields.
Throughout the article, Piper gave many examples of the types of sites that are (or were) floating around on cyberspace. Some of them are quite comical while others can be very shocking and damaging. One that I wish he would have mentioned is http://www.dhmo.org/ which is a website that tells the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. This website was taken very seriously, some governments even started campaigns warning people of the dangerous effects of this clear, odorless, tasteless, substance that the educated know to be H2O, or to put it simply, water! I first learned of this page when I was in high school and at first, it deceived me too. There are many sites out there that have the same agenda as this page does, and many of them are believed to be true by the gullible people in the digital society.
After describing the various forms of fake websites available, Piper took an interesting stance on the idea of falsifying the web. When I first read about the many types of sites there are where the main purpose is to make the readers look idiotic, I thought this was an outrage. However, Piper looks at them as possibly very helpful at times. Some of these sites, although biased and tweaked, can offer some very informative information and also opposing viewpoints of very real arguments. Others can be used for a good laugh. Piper supports the allowance of these websites to be on the internet but cautions readers in how to be aware that you are in fact reading one of these sites. At the end of his piece, he tells of the ways that you can differentiate between fact and fiction and also gives a number of sites to help the everyday reader along in their detective work.
I greatly appreciated this article, for it helped me to recognize very important cues that are needed in today’s information gathering. Although I believe these websites should all be required to state somewhere that the information they are disclosing is false or biased, I understand that this is impossible and unreasonable. Therefore, I am thankful that Piper took the time to inform the misinformed with his article.