Hey y'all, quick heads up. This episode deals with suicide.

You're listening to Disinformed, a mini-series from There Are No Girls on the Internet.

I'm Bridget Todd.

On this week's episode of Disinformed, we heard from Nora Benevitas, free speech attorney and the director of U.S. Free Expressions Programs at Penn America Foundation.

Now, as much as we talk about the steps platforms could be taking to keep inaccurate information from spreading online, Nora, who runs digital literacy training programs, really highlighted the role that individuals can play in curbing its spread.

Her number one tip was that we all just slow down when we're online, instead of smashing that retweet on things without really thinking it through.

We should all start asking ourselves how we feel when we're online. Like, are you feeling anxious? When you read things, are you angry? A lot of times disinformation will thrive because we're emotional.

And we often want to share things.

We want to engage with people quickly.

And so we'll accept something without fact checking it, without thinking about or asking ourselves, you know, who wrote this?

Where did it come from?

Why am I seeing it? So if you can just

sort of pause, like that is my number one recommendation. Pause to ask a number of things,

but just pause. And from slowing down, I think we actually could all benefit.

Just this week, I was leading a disinformation workshop, and somebody asked me if I had ever

shared something that wasn't totally accurate online.

And the answer is, of course I have.

In fact, every disinformation researcher, activist, advocate, or expert that I've ever talked to

has admitted to getting fooled by false information on social media at least once.

Seriously, it happens to the best of us.

And even the extremely online are still susceptible.

Now, it's easy to think about the spread of inaccurate information as something that other people

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