With the 2020 election coming up and growing concerns about bad actors using social media sites to spread misinformation, Tumblr is launching an internet literacy campaign to help young users spot suspicious activity.
The initiative, World Wide What, was developed in partnership with a nonprofit internet literacy organization based in the United Kingdom called Ditch the Label. The campaign consists of six informational videos that walk Tumbr’s community through topics like fake news and authenticity, along with other issues the platform encounters, like cyberbullying. Unlike traditional literacy videos, which Tumblr executives told The Verge are targeted at parents and teachers, these will use language and imagery native to Tumblr; that means GIFs, short texts, and tons of memes.
Internet literacy campaigns may induce eye-rolls for avid Tumblr users who have grown up on the internet, but Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio said the company “didn’t do this to be paternalistic.” The company simply “wanted to offer people more insights into how to handle these situations.”
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Source: Tumblr rolling out an internet literacy initiative to help combat misinformation – The Verge