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Fake News Spreads Faster Than True News On Twitter -- Thanks To People, Not Bots (sciencemag.org)
A new study shows that people are the prime culprits when it comes to the propagation of misinformation through social networks. Tweets containing falsehoods reach 1,500 people on Twitter six times faster than truthful tweets, the research reveals. Science Magazine reports: The lead author -- Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge -- and his colleagues collected 12 years of data from Twitter, starting from the social media platform's inception in 2006. Then they pulled out tweets related to news that had been investigated by six independent fact-checking organizations --
websites like PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org. They ended up with a data set of 126,000 news items that were shared 4.5 million times by 3 million people, which they then used to compare the spread of news that had been verified as true with the spread of stories shown to be false. They found that whereas the truth rarely reached more than 1000 Twitter users, the most pernicious false news stories routinely reached well over 10,000 people. False news propagated faster and wider for all forms of news -- but the problem was particularly evident for political news, the team reports today in Science. At first the researchers thought that bots might be responsible, so they used sophisticated bot-detection technology to remove social media shares generated by bots. But the results didn't change: False news still spread at roughly the same rate and to the same number of people. By default, that meant that human beings were responsible for the virality of false news.
duplicate news seems to spread fasted on slashdot though !
Nullius in verba
Perhaps fake news is designed to excite people while real news isn't.
Stands to reason why fake news spreads faster. It's designed to be more interesting, more controversial, and/or generally more appealing than the actual truth. Truth is often quite boring, after all.
It's like how virtual reality is more entertaining than actual reality.
See : The President of the United States.
Hillary bots aka shariablue spread more fakes affording to their examples.
Interesting.
So the Clinton Crime Family is projecting their own misdeeds when they cry "Russia bots."
A lie runs around the world before truth even has its boots on.
duplicate news seems to spread fasted on slashdot though !
... at twice the speed
I'm pretty sure those 6 independent fact checking websites get their marching orders at the same time of day as the MSM.
Fake news continuously repeated and retweeted left and right..
Quote from Douglas Adams' "Mostly Harmless":
"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there."
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Ipso factor lupo!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cnn-washing-machine/
It's all just a game to them. They cherry pick which sites they choose to "investigate" and flag for spreading "fake news". They know it's satire, it's about getting sites deranked that aren't spreading the right message. Now they want their hands on the controls of who gets throttled on twitter.
I don't tweet. Don't read social media.
So instead of all that cumbersome fact-checking, we can just measure the truth of a story on Twitter! And automate it! Then trolls would have to design purpousefully even slow-moving news to be believed. And we should trust only the medium-speed news. And then...
sudo ergo sum
Sounds like somebody didnâ(TM)t like their favorite fake news debunked. Since both sides complain about snopes, itâ(TM)s a reasonable source,
https://www.snopes.com/info/notes/politics.asp
Only in fake news in your head.
Kind of like flat earthed deniers, or those that still believe cigarette smoke is actually healthy for you.
They confirm your bias. It gives you a dopamine hit. Of course people like them more. Who'd eat spinach when they can have macadamia brittle ice cream?
Like taking the climate panic as true. Even though the whole thing is based on a suspicion that's been proven wrong.
Please elaborate.
Their methodology (roughly) seems to have been: take a sample of claims from fact checker sites, compare the spread of the ones marked "true" to the ones marked "false". But what are the factors that cause fact checking sites to write about something at all? In general, I think they are more likely to write about false things when people erroneously believe them, and true things when people erroneously disbelieve them. So I think the "true" sample in this study was selected for being less believable.
Snopes is reliable for debunking urban legends, scams and email hoaxes. But when it comes to anything remotely political they lean so obviously far to the left it's obvious. They have been caught out time and again insisting their fact checking is accurate even when presented with facts clearly proving them to be in the wrong. Politifact is biased but will occasionally admit they are wrong, not Snopes, cite proof to them and they double down defending their falsehoods and equivocations.
Example this case: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/outback-steakhouse-gun-policy-controversy/
Snopes continues to try an draw some imaginary distinction between this POST certified Law Enforcement Officer and a police officer or state trooper. They all have the same certification requirements and like the State trooper this officer also has statewide law enforcement jurisdiction. He is a police officer, he was in uniform, yet they insist on trying to qualify that he is not a Local Police Officer or State Trooper, when his legal authority is the same and nobody reported him as a local police officer or state trooper. Just as a Uniformed Officer who was asked to leave because he was armed as required by his superiors and possibly the law.
This is just one example that comes to mind, I questioned them on it and they stuck to justifying the "Mixture" rating because of their imaginary distinction.
When it comes to politics Snopes is so biased they are a joke as a "Fact Checker".
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Fake News spreads even fastr with network like CNN
The more you tell people its's fake! This has been scientifically proved.
I agree that there is a lot of recycling of related themes these days, but I suspect the cause is staffing shortages or priority "issues" among the current editors of Slashdot. Paid staff or volunteers? Either way the financial model appears to be continuing to work poorly.
As regards this story, I think that credibility should be an important dimension of EPR (Earned Public Reputation), but credibility is a hard one to define clearly and uniformly, so I think it should probably be broken down into several other dimensions. However the obvious effect of propagating garbage should be a reduction in the EPR of the propagator. This should still be part of system that is biased in favor of good behaviors, but if someone thinks some identity is propagating lies or fake news, then the evidence should be presented. (Getting more wrinkled, but I actually think there should be an appeals mechanism,too. NOT modeled after the fiasco that is YouTube.)
By the way, this EPR approach would work especially well where a significant number of the identities have been verified. Not yet clear if that is where Twitter is heading, but Twitter has even more room for improvement than Slashdot.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yea, the established media is losing their monopoly on the flow of information. So they push biased shitshows like Snopes as mediators of "truth".
Oh, you mean the TRUTH that the Jewish controlled media doesn't want you to know...
very biased in favor of the establishment and progressiveness.
You're using big words, but you don't seem to understand what they mean.
Hint: Bias towards the establishment is conservative, not progressive. Consult the nearest dictionary if you're still confused.
False news still spread at roughly the same rate and to the same number of people.
But did they check also if the news spread to the same people, all over again?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How many times did we roll our eyes and think to ourselves âoemorons!â when someone we knew sent us an email regarding the US post office contemplating charging postage for email delivery? And how many times did we get that rediculous email asking us to foreward to everyone we knew because Micro$uck was tracking the email in order to make email more efficient?
I used to tell people that those were virusâ(TM). Not computer code virusâ(TM) but rather ones spread by infecting human hosts by compromising rational thought.
You'll want to do some fact checking yourself as the article does not support your position. What is true is that a wildlife resources agency officer was asked to leave an Outback Steakhouse because an individual customer at another table became panicked due to the presence of his gun. What is false is that he's a state trooper or local police officer AND that the Outback Steakhouse has a "gun free zone"-policy, they do not and they have apologized to the officer. You're perfectly justified in feeling that a wildlife resources agency officer is equivalent to a police officer and state trooper and that he was told that there was a "gun free zone"-policy is bad enough, regardless if there is such a policy or not. However as a matter of fact checking the two propositions are false. Thus as far as fact checking, the mixture rating.
I mean the point of fake news is to convince people. Not bots. The fake news peddlers need to make it go viral. And it's humans that do that.
Exploit 3D Touch:
* Press F to forward news-that-might-be-fake
* Press F harder for news-I-know-is-fake
They are not there for fact checking.
Nobody creates a boring fake news story. Lots of real news is uninteresting. There's your difference. When it is believed, fake news travels faster because it is more interesting.
I haven't seen one, but I'd like to see such a beast if it exists.
"just as a Uniformed Officer who was asked to leave because he was armed as required by his superiors and possibly the law."
But they are not required to eat steaks while armed.
Perhaps fake news is designed to excite people while real news isn't.
This is it precisely. Fake news is deliberately crafted to outrage people. Real news is messy-- it doesn't have all the details, and there is always some "well this side makes a point but the other side has a point, too."
Also, real news is reported by a lot of sources-- people don't feel the need to spread "did you see what Trump just did" news when it's on all the news channels and headlines in all the newspapers, but they do feel the need to spread the "here's something outrageous that isn't in the news but should be" stories that are not in the news because they are made up.
But overall, yes: fake news spreads faster because it is crafted to outrage people.
This story has spread very fast, ergo - it is fake news. But if it is fake news, and spread fast, then it must be true! But if it's true, it must be fake news.
No explicit mention of the role of the various algorithms that promote posts? There has recently been quite a bit of research into how the platform software promotes click friendly content. Click friendly content is exactly as the article describes and thus mainly lies and fabrication. So there's a double whammy where clicky content is promoted by humans and the platforms. The profit motive breeds more fake news at all levels.
I don't even look at Twitter, and I do not follow politics on Facebook. I do follow a lot of main mainstream media sites on Facebook. La Times, cbsnews, usatoday, washingtonpost. And even what political news I do see, I always look for other reliable sources to verify what I am reading is true. At least as the majority of different sources know.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
"A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots"
If you don't read news on your social media outlet, you are uninformed. However, if you do read your news on social media, you are misinformed.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Also, real news is reported by a lot of sources-- people don't feel the need to spread "did you see what Trump just did" news when it's on all the news channels and headlines in all the newspapers,
Then why do they? Because they most assuredly do.
They most assuredly do what?
What the article showed is that fake news gets forwarded ten to a hundred times more than real news.
And then they add on top of it, with a lot unfounded Russian implications and other things that aren't real news.
Ah, I see. You're one of those "the Russian stuff is fake news!" guys.
No, "fake news" is a phrase that should be reserved for stuff that is actually completely made up-- like, "there's a pedophile ring operating underneath a pizza shop in New York that's frequented by celebrities and politicians", or 'Michele Bachmann said 'Jesus Created Assault Rifles'."
The fact that Russia did what they could to disrupt the U.S. elections (and for that matter, to foment dissent of any sort) is quite well documented-- it's not "fake news". Now, there's a lot of speculation that's been attached to that (a lot of "Mueller is investigating X!, and a lot of "who in the campaign knew, and what will we find out?") But the speculation is usually labelled speculation.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy. A good portion of the outrage stuff is fake (it exists on both sides); and some of it is real; the main stream media either prefers to highlight it, or to sweep it under the carpet, depending on whether it fits the narrative; while Buzzfeed and Salon are no more veracious than Breitbart.
The mainstream media for the most part labels speculation as speculation (and puts it on the opinion-editorial page). The way you can tell real journalism from fake journalism, by the way, is that real journalism issues corrections when they're wrong. https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s...
Except what's hilarious is that there is STILL no hard evidence that Trump Tower was wiretapped. It's entirely imagined, and gullible people have run with it as fact. At least it proves that some people are so detached from reality that they will forego all critical thinking to preserve that their belief is true. Gullible people (like you) make me a loooot of money.
This has got to be part of that "Future Shock" phenomena that Alvin Toffler wrote about in 1970.
We are the proverbial monkeys with a machine gun.
It still amazes me to see the vast proliferation of totally idiotic behavior by my fellow man.
Including the tendency to believe what one wants to believe.
I blame nearly all of it on Corporations and our puppet government.
Think about it. The media, TV shows, commercials (one of the worst!), and a lack of government help in the area of REAL education for the governed people allow for easy repression of the masses via catering to (our) easily manipulated wants.
I am willing to bet everything I have on the fact that a better educated public, as well as enforced truth in media, would go farther to helping us all, including the end our shooter crisis, than anything.
For example, making guns harder to get might help 1 symptom, yet will not end all shootings. Fixing those demented minds is a more practical solution.
We need to treat the societal diseases, not the symptoms. Guns would not be such a tough problem if we ALL knew better the truth and actually regulated the culprits of damage (e.g.corporate control, religious extremism, mind numbing TV (especially commercials), etc...).
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
"Fake news" is nothing more than what used to be called gossip.
Gossip is driven by impotent, passive-aggressive rage and travels at a speed proportional to the dysfunction -- the more messed up the community is, the faster the gossip will spread.
That's why it used to be that gossip was considered a negative thing and those who traded in it were considered undesirable types.
Maybe there's room for traditional, old-fashioned values in the progressive tech world. Put another way, and I know this is crazy, but maybe a balanced, centrist, rational approach isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's the extremism, from both sides, that is killing this country.