Maybe the tip to stop reading the news isn't that bad. But news still reach us: friends and family share posts and articles to us. But more often than not we get negative value after reading this stuff. We waste time and react emotionally even if only for a split second. Regular person is unlikely to prove or disprove a particular post. Especially data leaks. Say, news outlets start posting that a big company (or government) was hacked and there was a data leak. And the post contains a screenshot with some names, numbers etc. It may even contain some elements of an admin web interface which looks like some government stuff. But how do I know if it's not fake? There's pretty much no way of knowing that. The entity from which the data was allegedly extracted will deny leak allegations, even if it happened. The company has its reputation, as well as the government. It's not a silver bullet, but for most entities it is the best action to take. And to prove that the leak happened you need the whole dataset. Or at least more than 50% of it. Still, how do you know if it's not an old leak represented as new? How can you confirm the source of the leak? Will you personally analyze 50,000 rows? How? You don't know most of these people - how are you supposed to check if it's true? And the most important - does this leak hold any value? Can scammers actually steal your funds using this leaked data, or do something malicious to you? How much news can you remember that turned out to be true? And which turned out to be false? I came up with a news funnel concept for myself: Is this important for me? Did it happen already (allegedly...) or is it a speculation, prediction? Did it really happen? Can it really happen? How likely? How does this event affect me and my loved ones? Can I do something (or already did) to lower the risk? I have more food for thought: Do we need news moderation, censorship? (government or platform based) My two cents for this is: I would like to see everything that is sent to me (even though all of it may turn out to be a fake) and decide for myself. Although I would like to receive less such posts, but that's another story. After seeing lots and lots of bullshit (and for some time even believing it, I admit), it seems that to some extent I've learned to filter the news for myself. No system is ideal - so news moderation could work 99% of the time, but 1% would leave you vulnerable to disinformation. After all, if it reached me after censorship systems - it must be true! Not necessarily... I'm not sure though that my approach is the best for everyone, maybe some people react to everything and don't learn at all. Try and see how much news turned out to be a dud or just unimportant? I've checked message history in a couple of group chats: I didn't find anything valuable in terms of news, even though at the time of posting I could've reacted to some of these "news".