Mike’s guide is extremely helpful as a resource when it comes to fact checking online. I knew about Snopes, Politifact and Factcheck.org, but the other fact checking organizations were all new to me. I think the 4 moves that Mike lays out can be extremely helpful. Starting with checking if someone else has fact checked first can save immense amounts of time. I fact checked two of the articles Mike posted to his blog and it took less than 5 minutes to look them both up on Snopes. This meant that I didn’t need to go any further in my fact checking.

I appreciate the other three steps that Mike laid out as well. I don’t know that this will change any of my online activities necessarily beyond being another tool in my tool belt for when I need it. I rarely share things online, unless they are witty or amusing, but even then I usually share it to close friends and not publicly. I am also already a cynic by nature. When I see people post something that is provocative or that produces emotion my first reaction is to fact check them. I guess in that sense this will influence my online activities because now I have far more knowledge in a quick, efficient way to do that.