“People say believe half of what you see, son, and none of what you hear. But I can’t help but being confused. If it’s true, please tell me, dear.” – Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield

One thing about vocabulary that never changes is that vocabulary is always changing.

Our great-grandparents probably looked just as confused when our grandparents let loose from their lips, “That’s the cat’s pajamas,” as you look when your kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews utter something like, “Bruh is a straight rizzler, no cap.”

An odd phrase that came into vogue a few years ago with which some of you with an online presence might be familiar is Facebook jail. Social media giant Facebook can temporarily suspend any of its users – unofficially known as being in Facebook jail – whenever a user’s activity violates its standards.

You can end up in Facebook jail for a variety of reasons. My father once got locked out of his account because Facebook found his activity suspicious when he gamely attempted to respond to hundreds of posts from people wishing him a happy birthday.

Yet, most people probably became familiar with Facebook jail during the previous presidential campaign of 2020 when many major social media sites tried to prevent users from sharing politically based memes and messages considered to be grossly misleading or out and out false.

Some of those suspension may have been deserved and others maybe not. Nevertheless, using social media to spread targeted misinformation or disinformation appears to be the new reality in political discourse moving forward.

Misinformation means sharing information that is incorrect or misleading but is done so believing the information to be correct or sharing bad information without ill intent – maybe as a joke, for example. Disinformation is knowingly sharing information intended to deceive.

There is nothing new about mis/disinformation. The practice of sharing printed disinformation through newsletters, pamphlets and alternative newspapers has been around for over a century. Disinformation spread through organized campaigns of rumors and innuendo have been around since the dawn of civilization.

What is new is how social media opened a new doorway for all of us to become willing participants in spreading information designed to cause division, including information originating from foreign government sources.

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS’s Face the Nation two weeks ago that U.S. intelligence agencies know a sizable portion of the political content you are seeing on social media sites is coming from outside the country.

“There is a very reasonable chance – I would put it in the 20 to 30 percent range – that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries – Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.

You might assume disinformation coming from these countries might be designed to persuade Americans to view those countries in a more favorable light. There may be some of that, but the real goal of disinformation is to cause deep division within the country.

This serves two purposes. The first is the more we argue with our fellow countrymen, the less bandwidth we have to care about any actions other countries are carrying out. The second is to cause us to believe the real enemy is within our own walls.

The more we villainize the government leaders or political parties with which we disagree, the more likely we are to lose trust in the legitimacy of government itself when they are in power. Losing trust in government causes citizens to shift their trust to people, particularly those willing to tell them only what they want to hear.

Do not take this to mean we should never be critical of government decisions or political parties. I would just ask you to be careful before copying and pasting your next political message

Often these posts contain information that is mostly true but will sneak in some false or extremely slanted information designed to grind your gears and get you to share it instantly.

Nonprofit organization PEN America points out if you read a post online that makes you “especially angry or emotional” then this might have been exactly what it was intended to do. Just like thinking before you speak, thinking before you share online can be a good idea.

This type of messaging, in different forms, targets people on both the political right and the left, so it has emerged as a bipartisan problem. Outlandish political posts are likely to kick into high gear now as we approach another consequential presidential election. Watch out for them because I do not have the resources to bail you out of Facebook jail, and that is no cap.