I agree that posting a four-year-old video might make the viewer think the speaker is talking about today's news. I've made mistakes like that, on both the sending and receiving ends.

As you say, it would be better if we knew the provenance of everything we read. But most people -- who don't have a large budget and a staff of fact-finders and editors -- are going to make mistakes like that from time to time, and most are also time-restricted so trying to dig up the original source of an item from even a few days ago, or from someone else's post who didn't give his source, is going to be beyond the time commitments that they are willing to give to their social media.

I do wish it were better. I do agree that thrilling, and crazy, and incorrect rumors do spread faster than the dollar is devaluing. Some of these are from wacky people -- plenty of those out there -- but others, I suspect, are seeded into alternative media by intelligence agencies and groups like the ADL/SPLC to fracture our communities and make them look nutty.

Still, after more than a quarter century of using the Internet, I am still amazed at how much truth and insight alternative journalists and ordinary folks have given me -- much, MUCH, better than the lines the controlled "mainstream" media have fed me, at least on certain topics. If what I read was something really compelling and new to me, I tried to confirm it myself.

As for Voltaire and I being passionate about attribution, that was a reference to Thomas Massie and Elon Musk and a few other people re-posting a quote from me that was misattributed to Voltaire.