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'Relatively Few' Twitter Bots Were Needed To Spread Misinformation and Overwhelm Fact Checkers, Study Finds (nbcnews.com)
A new study conducted by Indian University researchers found that "relatively few accounts are responsible for a large share of the traffic that carries misinformation," with just 6 percent of Twitter accounts identified as bots responsible for 31 percent of "low-credibility" content. "Bots amplify the reach of low-credibility content, to the point that it is statistically indistinguishable from that of fact-checking articles," researchers wrote. NBC News reports: The study analyzed 14 million tweets that linked to more than 400,000 articles from May 2016 until the end of March 2017. Of those articles, 389,569 were from "low credibility sources" that had been repeatedly flagged by fact-checking organizations for containing misinformation, as well as 15,053 articles that originated from "fact-checking sources." Of that sample, over 13.6 million tweets linked to "low-credibility sources" and around 1.1 million tweets linked to known fact-checking sources, leading researchers to attribute greater virality with "fake news." To achieve maximum exposure, the study found that "social bots" used two methods to manipulate users into trusting the linked article's validity.
"First, bots are particularly active in amplifying content in the very early spreading moments, before an article goes 'viral,'" researchers wrote. "Second, bots target influential users through replies and mentions." Users struggled to differentiate bots from other human users, as humans "have retweeted bots who post low-credibility content almost as much as they retweet other humans," according to the researchers. The researchers noted that social media platforms have moved to address the spread of misinformation by bots, but said "their effectiveness is hard to evaluate."
"First, bots are particularly active in amplifying content in the very early spreading moments, before an article goes 'viral,'" researchers wrote. "Second, bots target influential users through replies and mentions." Users struggled to differentiate bots from other human users, as humans "have retweeted bots who post low-credibility content almost as much as they retweet other humans," according to the researchers. The researchers noted that social media platforms have moved to address the spread of misinformation by bots, but said "their effectiveness is hard to evaluate."
Users post content they find internet they find interesting, funny, to be news worthy.
The social media brand is not a publisher.
Social media just connects users. The users create the content.
Users do not need "fact-checking organizations" as they are not publishers.
They find something funny, creative and want to share it.
It could be a political cartoon, a meme, an image of a politician not able to keep up with campaigning.
Should the internet not get a good LOL at that because of "fact-checking organizations"?
Should party political government and think tanks set limits on what users can link to as funny? As creative? As news?
A users failed political campaign cartoon is a thinks tanks party political investment.
Should a partisan think tank get to remove a funny political cartoon?
Should a gov get to remove user uploaded images about the results of their gov policy?
Why should a think tank and organizations get to censor the free and open internet?
Let social media publish its own news and have its own "fact-checking" for its own published news under it own news brand.
Let users get on with LOL at news, events, art, faith, culture, celebrities, bad movie scripts, computer games and politics.
What will "fact-checking" remove next? Any comments about DRM? A bad game review? Movie review? Music? A user created political cartoon? What a new OS patch does to a file system?
Let users publish and enjoy their social media internet. They pay for social media with the ads they view and ads they are tracked by.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So what? Another 12% are probably humans spreading dishonest information.
Twitter as it’s designed is shit which is why it’s been used in this way. Maybe in another decade we’ll be able to get social networks right, but they’re all awful right now and mostly make people miserable addicts.