If you didn’t know Baltimore has a permanent Rumor Control hotline, you’re not alone. The municipal rumor-snuffing center is little promoted today. Rumor Control’s mission is squash misinformation, loose talk, and wild-haired stories that might affect the health and safety of the city. It was established in 1968 to ease tensions and provide information amid the riots that followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Once its services were advertised on the sides of buses. Now about the only place you’ll find the number is buried in the phone book’s blue-paged government listings. “Most of the calls that come in today just want to know what Rumor Control is”.

i wonder if the panopticon singularity hedged with augmented social networks will be able to stem the tide of quacks?

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