If I am being honest, not many of the reports I do surprise me. Celebrity scandal? Par for the course. Intellectual brown nosing? See it all the time. Perversion of science? Please, that is just a Tuesday. Rabid anti-vaxxers destroying public property while the police kick back and stuff more donuts down their throats? Well, that is pretty much every day. Conspiracy theories about aliens? You cannot walk two feet in America without hearing one. Offshore tax shelters? You do realize that is the reason that billionaires exist, right? Granted, the aforementioned topics are all interesting, but they are also expected. However, I did not expect Facebook to spread conspiracy theories while it was not even operational. I mean, how does that even happen? It turns out, in a desperate attempt to get attention from somebody, Facebook fanatics jumped on Twitter so that they could spread their conspiracy nonsense their instead. You may not realize it, but Facebook is one of the largest spreaders of misinformation on the web today. According to NPR, (a reputable right center news organization, not a far left communist plot to take over the world as some Facebook users may claim) "After the events of Jan. 6, researcher Laura Edelson expected to see a  spike in Facebook users engaging with the day's news, similar to  Election Day. 'The thing was, most of that spike was concentrated among the partisan  extremes and misinformation providers,' Edelson told NPR's All Things Considered.  'And when I really sit back and think about that, I think the idea that  on a day like that, which was so scary and so uncertain, that the most  extreme and least reputable sources were the ones Facebook users were  engaging with, is pretty troubling.' It turns out Facebook is one the largest super spreaders of misinformation out there today, so it makes perfect sense that when Facebook is down, the misinformation spreads to other social platforms like Twitter, which is where several false conspiracy theories about the Facebook blackout spread like wildfire. Some, mostly Q-anon followers, even claimed that the blackout was part of the "ten days of darkness" that would return king Trump of Orange to his greasy throne. No such thing happened of course, and Facebook was fully operational by the end of the same night it went down. And, trust me, the misinformation will not stop now that it is back up; it will only increase, "A new study from Cybersecurity For Democracy found that far-right accounts known  for spreading misinformation are not only thriving on Facebook, they're  actually more successful than other kinds of accounts at getting likes,  shares and other forms of user engagement...It's almost twice as much engagement per follower among the sources  that have a reputation for spreading misinformation," Edelson said. "So,  clearly, that portion of the news ecosystem is behaving very  differently." Yeah, differently as in crazily. "What Edelson and her colleagues discovered is what some Facebook critics — and at least one anonymous executive — have been saying for some time: that far-right content is just more  engaging. In fact, the study found that among far-right sources, those  known for spreading misinformation significantly outperformed  non-misinformation sources." So, as you dive back into the wild world of Zuckerberg, always remember that the posts you are most likely to see are likely far right fear mongers trying to sell you guns, supplements, archaic religious fundamentalism, and horse paste enemas. Facebook is like smoking a box of cigars all at once, you never know when you're going to die a horrible death. Image Credit: Oladimeji Ajegbile