I never liked the “don’t believe anything you read on the internet” line, it focuses too much on the internet without considering that you shouldn’t believe anything you read or hear elsewhere either, especially on divisive topics like politics.

You should evaluate information you receive from any source with critical thinking, consider how easy it is to make false claims (e.g. probably much harder for a single source if someone claims that the US president has been assassinated than if someone claims their local bus was late that one unspecified day at their unspecified location), who benefits from convincing you of the truth of a statement, is the statement consistent with other things you know about the world,…