@valleyforge I wouldnt go quite that far, but to some extent I agree. You can have limited trust in secondary sources if they have a good reputation in the past of being bipartisan.

The issue is most people arent citing sources with the intention of uncovering truth. People almost always cite sources with the intention of selling a particular agenda. do you think if this same person saw an article come across her feed with the actual facts in it and praising, rather than blaming, trump they would have shared it? Of course not. The mentality here was 1) I hate trump and am pro biden 2) I will share things that reinforce #1 and ignore things that dont.

At no point do I think the person who made the post actually cared if it was true or not, it bashed trump, and was pro dems, that's all they needed. It was ammo for that agenda. They never went "let me go do a quick google search to see if I can share the unbiased facts, even if it makes the republicans look good".. of course not, never, that would in fact be unthinkable. I can almost guarantee you people like this, if you search their feed, will always present evidence in an intentionally one sided manner, that is the goal, it is by design not an accident.