Two things I'm seeing spread through the Facebook posts of very not-online family/friends: false claims that Biden is raising insulin prices, and false claims that he's making it harder for women to compete in athletics.

This is how this stuff snowballs.

These aren't folks in online forums or discussion boards, or that engaged in politics. They are, however, amplifying and believing this stuff with basically no pushback, and I've read enough of it to know that this is how the well gets poisoned. It's 09/10 redux.

Most people don't have time to read through EO's or press releases, and bad actors are very good at identifying whatever they think is the new "death panel" lie they can seize on.

Most of their lies fail - they don't gain traction. But more and more frequently, they gain enough momentum to jump from a very-online ecosystem into the unsuspecting social media diets of folks who, honestly, don't know what they're about to digest.

It's like food poisoning, but without any of the defense mechanisms our body employs (hours of pain, fever, and expelling the toxins).

We didn't eat the food expecting it to be poisoned - in fact 99% of the time we trust the food is safe.

Because there is no defense mechanism, these folks slowly continue eating more and more of the poison, and by the time those of us who can see the problem tell them to stop, they're already in a far deeper mess than a simple comment or reply can fix.

We need to get better at designing and deploying social media defense mechanisms that help us fight back against the poison - things we can offer to friends/family the minute we see the issue - a grassroots, triaged rapid response.