Using RSS and Email to prevent future embarrassment

We’ve all seen it: the Facebook post purporting that onions cure every illness, or that asking your friends to make changes on the network will keep your posts private and invisible to all the “baddies” out there.

By this point I’m sure we know that’s all hogwash, but every day there are more and more urban myths that find life, or renewed life (like the Back to the Future post that pops up every other month) because people share without fact checking first. I’m sure some of you have seen my quick reaction to point out a Snopes.com article either clarifying or refuting this claim or that…. perhaps you’ve even wondered how it is I am so quick to know? Well, friends, here’s my secret weapon: RSS and immediate email notification.

Using the What’s New RSS feed from snopes.com, I can see every new or updated article that comes out of Snopes, right when they post it. Mind you I don’t necessarily read all articles, but this puts the topic information in my head so I know where to retrieve the details if I see it pop up later.

But just using RSS means I need to constantly watch my RSS reader for updates, which is a bit of a pain at times. So I added an email notification to the equation using IFTT.com, so now I get an email notice whenever Snopes adds a new article. Here’s the recipe I created to do this, but you can create your own if you prefer to get notices via text, tweets, or a cadre of other various channels!

This results in a nice simple email notice like this, which pops into my inbox about once a day at their normal rate of article posting:

So now you know my secret weapon in the fight against promoting false content and preventing my own embarrassment, but better yet, now you too can help dispel myth and rumour faster than a speeding… well you know 😉