I’m sure this is obvious to most of my readers, but it makes me feel better to put it in writing.

If you’re not familiar with Gell-Mann amnesia, it’s a cognitive bias described as “the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.”

The original statement about it was about newspapers, and yet I now see people doing this all the time with TikTok. “They saw it on TikTok” is used in most of my circles with an eyeroll and an obvious implication that whatever opinion was offered was uninformed (at best), and (at worst) completely made up. Now wait 5 minutes and change topics and some of those same people will turn around and seriously cite TikTok as an authority on different topics they know much less about.

So here’s my PSA: if you do not think topics you care about can be adequately summed up on TikTok in 2 minutes, assume that things you know less about can also not be summed in 2 minutes. If you think TikTok is rife with misinformation on topics you care about, assume it is also rife with misinformation on topics you are unfamiliar with.

Newspapers were never perfect, but in general they had more to lose when publishing incorrect or defamatory information. TikTokers can hide their identity, delete videos, and individual creators often are “judgment proof” or have too little money to sue. While there is good information on TikTok, always do the due diligence you’d want others to do if they came across a video in your field of interest.

Stepping back off my soapbox, happy Saturday!