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People Older Than 65 Share the Most Fake News, Study Finds (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities. Older users shared more fake news than younger ones regardless of education, sex, race, income, or how many links they shared. In fact, age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic -- including party affiliation. Today's study, published in Science Advances, examined user behavior in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In early 2016, the academics started working with research firm YouGov to assemble a panel of 3,500 people, which included both Facebook users and non-users. On November 16th, just after the election, they asked Facebook users on the panel to install an application that allowed them to share data including public profile fields, religious and political views, posts to their own timelines, and the pages that they followed. Users could opt in or out of sharing individual categories of data, and researchers did not have access to the News Feeds or data about their friends.
About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29). As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29). As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
Print and later TV used to be the gatekeepers of information. What made it into mass media tended to be true. Now there are no gatekeepers, for better and for worse.
I know one old man who's been sharing a lot.
That seems to correlate with the age of the Fox News audience.
All the young people need to start trolling old people on Facebook until they either quit Facebook or have a heart attack. Problem solved! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
when they see it online and recall the truth.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Do older people just share more news? Do they share a larger percentage of fake news? Also as you get older you see so many real cases of your government killing a half a million here (Syria) or 4.5 million (Vietnam) that you get to the point that you can believe almost anything. Yes Hillary is a progressive excetera.
The big thing that TFA seems to miss is that I find that older people don't tend to understand that basically anybody can put together a professional looking website with articles that seem to be written by journalists. For most of their lives, they've only had three TV networks, major newspapers and other media outlets that have been invested in the copy and its presentation.
It's hard for them NOT to believe stories like "Hillary and Oprah had an affair in the 1970s" when they can find it on http://abcnews.go.corp/ - which is a an actual article I got forwarded from an elderly family member during the 2016 election and we had to explain to her that the URL wasn't actually ABC News even though it had the actual ABC logo which means the story wasn't true.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I can see both the inexperience of youth and the calcification of the opinions of the elderly.
I know very well what the first is like, and sadly can see myself headed straight for the second. There is much wisdom there, but it really does depend on what kind of life you have had. Opinions that took a lifetime to form, very rarely change by themselves. Old people do what they do and so do the young. The troubling thing is that most are addicted to the social network, not that sometimes bad ideas proliferate on it.
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I think digital skills are a factor, but I think a bigger factor might be cultural alienation.
Realistically western culture is dominated by white males between 25 and 55, diversity is rising... but that demographic still rules.
Nevertheless this group is becoming a lot more progressive than previous generations of white males, the 65+ group of white males, and that previous group is becoming alienated from modern culture and acting accordingly.
And how do you explain being out of step with modern culture and morality? Well you justify it with a different set of facts, ie, fake news! The fake news isn't there to trick people, it's there to give them an excuse to trick themselves!!
I stole this Sig
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17380096/fox-news-alternate-reality-charts
The stories Fox News covers obsessively — and those it ignores — in charts
Compare Fox News’s alternate reality to other cable news coverage.
Go on, don't be a pussy Republican, take a gander at how the sausage (your lazy mind) is made.
"No need for a communist like yourself to be wanting and wishing for state ran media." - are you ironically ignoring the fact that Fox News is essentially Trump's campaign management and advisory board in one?
Literally. https://www.thedailybeast.com/sean-hannity-in-trouble-with-fox-after-participating-in-trump-ad
In other news, water is wet.
Of 3500 initial respondents in wave 1, 1331 (38%) agreed to share Facebook profile data with us
So they surveyed 3500 respondents. Then asked them to share their facebook profile to collect data on links and news they shared. Of which only 38% agreed.
And guess what? Most of the 38% who agreed were OLD PEOPLE because they're more than happy to share at the drop of a request. And that's how your numbers are formed.
This is as scientific as throwing chicken bones to predict the future...
There was the WWII propaganda, but you could excuse that with the war. The lost a bit of control with Vietnam, but look at the coverage of the Iraq war. I'm too out of it to go dig up more/better examples, but go find Norm Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent for a comprehensive look at it.
Our media has served corporate masters for decades, probably centuries.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Age related cognitive decline is a thing and we're all susceptible to it. It worries me that there might come a day when I morph into a Trump supporter out of fear and confusion. e.g. there'll come a time when I can't tell a crook from an honest man because my critical thinking facilities are toast.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Any news article that decries "fake news" is itself fake news.
Perhaps "fake news" is any news article that's likely to displease inbred twits from the boss class?
"Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman."
Sooooo, BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman is the arbiter of what is fake news and what is not. BuzzFeed. Really! Head slap here....
"..older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes."
What are digital literacy skills? Being able to tweet? Proper use of OMG? Ability to "like" on Facebook?
Cognitive decline as they age....so at 65 people are stupid? Let's see....Hillary is how old? Pelosi? Schumer? CEO of many of the largest real industry companies.
WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP.
This could be fake news ...
Vox, Gawker, AND politico!?
I'm sold! How could it NOT be real?!
This study is fake news in that the list of "real news"cited is almost entirely opinion pieces from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.
Story Publication
Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one? Washington Post
Stop Pretending You Don't Know Why People Hate Hillary Clinton Huffington Post
Melania Trump’s girl-on-girl photos from racy shoot revealed New York Post
I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton. New York times
Ford fact checks Trump: We will be here forever CNN
‘Pantsuit Power’ flashmob video for Hillary Clinton: Two women, 170 dancers and no police Washington Post
The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins Wall Street Journal
More Than 160 Republican Leaders Don’t Support Donald Trump. Here’s When They Reached Their Breaking Point New York Times
New Kasich ad: If Trump becomes president, ‘you better hope there’s someone left to help you’ Washington Post
The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign Vox
He fought in World War II. He died in 2014. And he just registered to vote in Va Washington Post
Donald Trump Is Going To Be Elected Huffington Post
Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President New York times
Hillary Clinton for President New York times
Max Lucado: My prediction for November 9 FOX News
Donald and Billy on the Bus New York times
Trump campaign manager: There'd be no rape if women were stronger New Yor Daily News
A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump New York Times
Donald Trump Voters, Just Hear Me Out New York Times
FBI Completes Review of Newly Revealed Hillary Clinton Emails, Finds No Evidence of Criminality NBC News
There's another aspect of this that all the idiots here are failing to consider. My 80 year old father loves to share fake news stories with family and friends.
It's always part of a conversation about how low certain factions will stoop in an attempt to get their way. I don't think there's ever been one he thought might actually be true.
For those who think crap like this makes sense, it's worth keeping something in mind. When you look at what someone is doing and don't understand it, it could indeed be because they are stupid. However, it's at least as likely that you are.
the elderly will also do whatever the post tells them to do.
it's a trust thing. because some older associate of them did the same. if it includes something like "a friend lawyer told me to copy paste this" to make some authority. but it's not a friend lawyer of the guy who copy pasted it, but the other elderly seeing that text will think it is, thus it has to be legit because here's this straight up guy they have known 30 years posting that his lawyer told him to share this.
and they will not google/research/apply critical thinking at all. just get outraged and copypaste the thing.
like a typical elderly share includes a "copy to your wall, do not use share".. so it's not the same original fake story, it's copypasted text of the original so it's not so easy for fb to mark them as fake news either with a link to the claimed source explaining how channel 13 never ran this story and how it's all a hoax.
like the "copy this to your wall or facebook will publish all your private data due to privacy change!" thing has been making rounds _again_ just this week.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's not obvious whether they've corrected for the fact that retirees naturally have more free time to waste sharing links on Facebook; and of course, sharing more links makes it more likely that at least one of them will be 'fake news'. As noted, some fake news sites can appear to be extremely convincing, masquerading as well-known publications but with a different URL or a slightly different name, and if you're not attentive it can be easy to be taken in - which can happen to just about anybody. I'm sure that for some seniors, cognitive decline enters into the picture, but I suspect that a lot of it may be just that they do more sharing period.
...oh wait.
This is an easy one to solve.
Dear Facebook, Cut down on fake news. Turn off sharing for the elderly.
Your citizen, Anonymous Coward (Not older than 65)
Better still, suspend voting rights once the first Social Security check arrives.
Completely kidding here. My first check will be arriving soon.
"As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts."
I'm an old fart that age too and I was on the Internet before the worldwide web was invented.
We worked on DOS and with Windows 1.03 and unlike the young whippersnappers, we know that Microsoft Office is not the same thing as Microsoft Windows.
Did you expect the websites to be up forever with no repercussions for the site owners? It's still possible to sue for libel, you know?
They made their excellent profits and moved on. And now that organizations care more about fact checking, those sites have been banned from most social media sites for having too many blatantly false stories. Spreading obvious lies for clicks doesn't pay as well as it used to on those platforms.
I'LL BE DELETING FACEBOOK! !! Hi I'm Mark Zuckerberg The Director of facebook. Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, facebook use will cost money If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you. If you do not believe me tomorrow at 6 pm that facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay, this is all by law. This message is to inform all our users, that our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users if you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of Lose all your cont the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts the update will be canceled and you will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages Will go to pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts Send this sms and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user Confirmed ... We finish it for free Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents Forward this message to more than 9 people of your contacts and it will be free of life for you to watch and it will turn green the ball of above do it and you will see.to 9 of you
Pause
-2:44
Unmute
Video Of The Internet added a new video: A WORLD WITHOUT FACEBOOK.
Mark Zuckerberg deletes Facebook???
Video Of The Internet
soylentnews.org
Can attest to this as I regularly get posts and emails from the older people on my feed about things like poisonous toilet spiders and the Olympic torch virus.
Nothing to see here, move along please.
You should read the actual study if you think it's based on who Buzzfeed doesn't like instead of on what is objectively blatantly false. Have some integrity.
Perhaps my circle is different, but most of use old fogies avoid Facebook and Twitter like the plague, precisely because it's unreliable. (Hence my moniker.) Perhaps the sample is biased by including only old duffers who fall for social media in the first place.
I'm thankful that most people I'm close to who are in the 65 and over age group don't post to Facebook; but the number and extremity of falsehoods in e-mails some of them forward is astounding. Right-leaning organizations are far better (or less morally inhibited) than left-leaning organizations when it comes to targeting elderly people with fearmongering falsehoods. I've seen some pretty out-there anti-Trump stuff too, but that mostly comes across as overly hopeful instead of being filled with blatant lies designed to inspire fear and distrust of large groups of people.
like the "copy this to your wall or facebook will publish all your private data due to privacy change!" thing has been making rounds _again_ just this week.
If you use Facebook at all, this is a significant risk anyway.
SCNR
C - the footgun of programming languages
In looking at the study, there are really only a handful of "news" sources that are the worst offenders of supplying fake news, making this a rather finite problem. Instead of targeting/making fun of the victims in a study, is there a reason they did not focus efforts on eradicating the fucking problem instead?
The solution for Facebook is rather simple, assuming they actually give a shit about the problem in the first place. Every news source who wishes to advertise on Facebook starts out in good standing with a 100 credibility rating. When fake news is reported and verified to be fake, you reduce the sources credibility score. If it falls below a certain threshold, they are banned from Facebook advertising. You can make that a temporary ban initially with repeat offenders getting a more permanent ban.
This problem is not hard. The real problem is convincing Facebook to step away from the money and focus on quality content.
As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts.
When snopes.com has been around since the days of dial-up internet, I find this excuse rather lame. It's not hard to teach someone to use something like Snopes. Perhaps we should start with teaching that young employee hired to validate Facebook articles, preferably before they are made public on the platform. You know, instead of wasting time on No-Shit-Sherlock grade studies that essentially provide the public with a precisely targeted punching bag group of people to make fun of. (and here I thought the anti-bullying mentality was actually popular).
They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
Kids need to remember this fact. This isn't just "stupid old people who can't use a computer". This will be you in your golden years.
I bet you're old.
too bad the study did not include why the fake news was shared. I think the results would surprise the researchers. Just because news was shared does not mean it was believed.
Because the story is like 5 hours old? When was the last time you read anything on /. that wasn't at least a day or two old?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
if this is fake news.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
And these are the
I'd have figured it would be on a long fox news magazine type show with a dedicated block of time. It's not like any of those outlets aren't employing a fairly decent sized journalist staff. When you're comparing news sources with agendas I think clickbait is maybe a little better than an elaborate scheme of propaganda dreamed up long before I was alive. Fox news has always been garbage and at least nice to see they had a plan and went through with it. Evil genius is still genius.
... also make it into the "fake news" list?
https://medium.com/@micheleand...
Just asking because the linked list of "fake news" is not "fake news" in general, but "fake news in support of Trump", while the "Real story"s are mostly pro Hillary opinion pieces. The problem then is, that the "fake" vs. "true" contrast in the selection is also a "Trump" vs. "Hillary" contrast, i.e. you can't distinguish if you select for "fake news believers" or for "trump supporters". In proper research you'd want to distinguish those by multivariate correlation analysis.
As it is their main result seems to be that trump supporters are conservatives and on average older than Hillary supporters.
Hardly surprising.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The problem is rather complex.
A natural aspect of Ageing, is that people feel more comfortable around similar people, and become more distrustful of the others. As when our biology gets past the finding a mate with good genes, to having and raising children. We get to a point on Human lives were they are protective of their clans, and normally try to keep unity within it. So from ages 0-13 Learn about culture, 14-25 find a mate, 26-60 have children and raise them to adulthood, 60+ teach culture, and lessons learned.
This is rather good set of instincts for small communities and clans. However we are adapting to a much wider world. Back in the old days before we had wide literacy, word of mouth from predominate figures (mayors, preachers, teachers) was considered to be truthful, while the gossip was considered questionable info.
Then we started to get news papers, who will fact check and put predominate figures in place. The kids who are reading papers, know the BS the predominate figures are stating, but the older generation, will still cling to the fact the guy said it, that guy is important, so it must be the truth. As news papers grew, many of them started posting deceiving content, where radio/television came across. Because Broadcasting was expensive the were more likely to report on factual information and less on misleading people, besides stories where their competitors are wrong brought in more money. Then came the Internet, this gave us links to a lot more sources and allowed us to dig further then ever. That 5 minute blurb on the TV wasn't accurate or complete, plus it was full of their own bias. So people found the internet to be more trustworthy then TV news. The that leads us to today. Where we need to figure out the truth of the content we read, we know what is BS wording and what is important. But the older generation isn't properly exposed to it. So they fall for the tricks more easily.
Especially if the news holds on to their world view, and doesn't try to challenge them further. To the older generation this is good news, that they can share as part of their biological need to teach culture to the youth.
My Parents who are in their 70's will often post these stories on Facebook. Look at these laws, see how the Communist used these laws to hurt people. Or take a private comment and twist it to a full conspiracy. They honestly feel that they need to spread the word, to make sure we don't do the stupid stuff that has happened in the past. However they put too much trust in the sources, and over simply a complex issue.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When snopes.com has been around since the days of dial-up internet, I find this excuse rather lame. It's not hard to teach someone to use something like Snopes. Perhaps we should start with teaching that young employee hired to validate Facebook articles, preferably before they are made public on the platform. You know, instead of wasting time on No-Shit-Sherlock grade studies that essentially provide the public with a precisely targeted punching bag group of people to make fun of. (and here I thought the anti-bullying mentality was actually popular).
I guess you don't know this, but at least since 2016 (I remember that year because of the US presidential election) American right wingers have been saying that Snopes itself isn't trustworthy and is a liberal front for the Democratic Party whose goal is to knock down conservatives and the Republican Party.
I grew up in a small town where lots of people i went to school with are now very conservative Republicans. I've seen them blast Snopes as being unreliable when someone, usually on the left, usually Snopes to point out that some article they shared on Facebook is false. This seems to be based on one story that was some kind of joke that Snopes fell for and called a hoax when it was actually just a joke and pretty obvious to everybody not at Snopes that it was just a joke. So some devious conservatives realized that the best way to fight Snopes is to accuse them of lying and being Democratic shills because conservatives will believe it. There's a lot more dishonesty in the US right now from the right than the left, so a large part of what Snopes debunks is lies from the right and conservatives just use that as "proof" that Snopes is a front for the Democratic Party and can't be trusted either.
The other alternative is that they truly do not care about job security.
I think there are many factors, including simply having more time and not as much to spend it on - hanging out with the remaining friends and family on Facebook and sharing fairly indiscriminately as a way of "keeping in touch" might be more prevalent.
And probably growing up at a time when news came from newspapers which had actual journalists that verified the news, and a desk with editors that approved publishing. Post-Murdoch, news just isn't what it was.
The other tidbit, that republicans are far more likely to share fake news than democrats, I don't think is entirely due to fake news being Trump-friendly. i have a feeling that if adjusting for that, republicans would still be ahead. If nothing else because of a correlation between political affinity and accepting outrageous claims and long-living memes like the Jewish carpenter story. I.e. a propensity for believing over questioning.
It kind of makes sense, I guess... many elderly people come from an era where Dan Rather or Peter Jennings read them the days news on TV every night and it was treated like gospel and rarely questioned.
Cognitive decline does happen, but I think they're not being very objective here.
As adults in our prime, the world marches to our drum beat. We don't necessarily agree with all that happens, but we're pretty involved in it happening and see what is going on, allowing us to gauge the news fairly objectively. The older we get, the more the drumbeat of civilization begins to march to the beat of those younger than us, at some point our children. We don't understand anymore, and we often don't like the change, and we rely more on the news to inform us about what's going on. Not everyone has the best tools to weigh that news, but unlike our adult selves, we have no other sources to help us identify obvious lies.
Combine inaccurate, even blatantly fake news which is carefully tailored to our biases and dislikes... it's not a big surprise that the elderly are confused. Everyone tends to favor the news article that agrees with their opinion, even if it is wrong and ungrounded in fact. If someone blasts you with that from all sources, it reinforces your beliefs. This is exactly what is happening.
There is another time in life that all of us have already experienced where we were clueless and gullible and could be easily misled by carefully targeted news: youth. The difference is in that stage of our life, at best we were viewed as precocious, at worst we were viewed as rebellious. But we were exposed to things we didn't understand, we attempted to hold a point of view and simply got rolled when actual facts were presented by our elders (or sometimes, real life) that conflicted. This doesn't work on the elderly, to them we're just kids, and they've mastered real life to the point where only the grim reaper can change their point of view.
There might be something to your comment. My step mom is very quick to get spun up and share likely fake news on facebook. She is over 65, retired, remarried to my dad and moved about 5 years ago, and for many days at a time the only thing she contributes is making dinner. I get the feel she lacks self worth and her friends who were across the street are now a 30 min drive
While this is interesting, BuzzFeed is complete journalistic garbage.
I wouldn't trust anything even remotely connected to them.
- Alex
Scary thing is that this kind of crap is believed as news...I guess it makes for better headlines to call it 'Fake News' instead of 'Dumb-ass People Believing Everything They Read'
(Fast-forward to 2040. Deepfake AI exists. Humans can no longer discern reality in video)
I guess it makes it for better headlines to call it 'Fake Videos' instead of 'Old fuckers who refuse to get their optical AI implant'
Today may be scary, but the future will be FAR worse, and it won't be just those old people who will believe this crap.
Just say'n
Those old people just aren't woke. That's the problem! /s
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
One very important detail the study leaves out is the reason why fake news stories are shared.
Perhaps the fake news was shared because they know it's fake and are warning their friends about how ridiculous and incorrect the story is and to watch out for similar BS.
Perhaps the sharer actually really did believe it and wanted to 'educate' others (as sharing fake news implies).
Perhaps a fake news story was shared because the person found the fake news so outrageous as to be humorous and they simply shared it with their friends to give them a laugh. Kind of like the old supermarket tabloids that showed ridiculous stuff like a pic of Bill Clinton shaking hands with an alien on the front page with the heading 'Aliens endorse Clinton for president'. You see that, you pick it up, and you show it to your friend/gf/wife and you both get a chuckle out of it.
Alternatively, why is the fake news not shard? Was it believed as true and not shared because they've seen it on six other social media sites earlier. Maybe it wasn't shared because they are afraid that others may think they believe if they share it or are afraid of offending someone. Or did the person never see it because it was blocked by ad-blockers?
The conclusion of the study should not be old people share more fake news than younger people, but rather a very small percentage of people share fake news.
BuzzFeed does not have the best reputation for reliable reporting.
Quick example:
Buzzfeed’s Trump report takes ‘fake news’ to a new level
https://nypost.com/2017/01/10/buzzfeeds-trump-report-takes-fake-news-to-a-new-level/
The story about older people spreading fake news more than younger people, could be true. Then again, all of this comes from Trump hating leftist sources.
So if you are over 65 and on Facebook, you are reading and sharing news. A lot of it is fake apparently. Is that just because you are sharing tons of news in general?
If you are less than 65, you are on Facebook to do other things rather than mostly deal with news info... like post photos of yourself or snoop on your friends and family... maybe play Facebook video games that give PC viruses.
The study's stats are kind of weird... only 49% of the people agreed to let their profile be looked at. After that, they say 11% of oldies shared fake stuff, whereas 8% of non-over-65 people shared. Of those 11% of oldies over 65, apparently they shared twice as much fake news as the 45-65 category, and 7 times as much as the younger generation. But ... do people under 30 even care about news? My guess is most do not and share NO "news" articles.
This is interesting... I've been wondering if there are sites that "usually do fake news"... and they say yes. If you look on the article, it links to this
https://docs.google.com/spread...
Which says all the well known names are doing real news:
Washington Post, Huffington Post, New York Post, New York times, CNN,Wall Street Journal,Vox,FOX News,New York times, New Yor Daily News, NBC News
These guys apparently often do fake news:
Ending the Fed
The Political Insider
Denver Guardian
World News Daily Report
Conservative State
Burrard Street Journal
abcnews.com.co
Liberty News
Yes I'm Right
Twitchy
World News Daily Report
World Politic US
USA Newsflash
Breitbart
Donald Trump News
World Politic US
Winning Democrats
DC Clothesline
Departed.co
Every News Here
Biz Standard News
Burrard Street Journal
American News
Biz Standard News
NC Scooper
American News
Conservative Tribune
Heavier Metal
Empire News
National Report
YourNewswire
Heavier Metal
YourNewswire
United Media Publishing
Heavier Metal
Adobo Chronicles
American Military News
Reel News Network
Empire News
LGBTQ Nation
The News Nerd
Celebricity
The Political Insider
Daily Currant
National Report
Superstation95
Celebricity
USA Daily Politics
World News Daily Report
TMZ Hip Hop
USA News Flash
Satira Tribune
NC Scooper
Satira Tribunes
National Report
When snopes.com has been around since the days of dial-up internet, I find this excuse rather lame. It's not hard to teach someone to use something like Snopes. Perhaps we should start with teaching that young employee hired to validate Facebook articles, preferably before they are made public on the platform. You know, instead of wasting time on No-Shit-Sherlock grade studies that essentially provide the public with a precisely targeted punching bag group of people to make fun of. (and here I thought the anti-bullying mentality was actually popular).
I guess you don't know this, but at least since 2016 (I remember that year because of the US presidential election) American right wingers have been saying that Snopes itself isn't trustworthy and is a liberal front for the Democratic Party whose goal is to knock down conservatives and the Republican Party. I grew up in a small town where lots of people i went to school with are now very conservative Republicans. I've seen them blast Snopes as being unreliable when someone, usually on the left, usually Snopes to point out that some article they shared on Facebook is false. This seems to be based on one story that was some kind of joke that Snopes fell for and called a hoax when it was actually just a joke and pretty obvious to everybody not at Snopes that it was just a joke. So some devious conservatives realized that the best way to fight Snopes is to accuse them of lying and being Democratic shills because conservatives will believe it. There's a lot more dishonesty in the US right now from the right than the left, so a large part of what Snopes debunks is lies from the right and conservatives just use that as "proof" that Snopes is a front for the Democratic Party and can't be trusted either.
I get that this study was centered around an election timeframe, but the fake news problem isn't limited strictly to politics. It's merely fashionable right now to join the left or the right and bash the living shit out of the other side by any means necessary. Professional Victim and SJW are valid professions these days. Lies from the right aren't any easier to deal with than mass ignorance from the left (as Evergreen State can attest). A name-calling shit-show between those two groups in recent times isn't exactly what I would define as justification to discredit sites like Snopes. If either the right or the left were actually interested in preserving truth over all, they would work to support fact-checking services, not destroy them.
against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed
You're using Buzzfeed as a referee for what's fake news? Right.
Just another day in Paradise
This is an easy one to solve.
Dear Facebook,
Cut down on fake news. Turn off sharing for the elderly.
Your citizen,
Anonymous Coward (Not older than 65)
Better still, suspend voting rights once the first Social Security check arrives.
Completely kidding here. My first check will be arriving soon.
I'm about two years away from my first check. If you take away my voting rights, you'll probably need to confiscated my guns first.
Just another day in Paradise
You mean like anything from Faux, Breitbart, or the Daily Caller?
Sorry, almost no one I know shares that bs (and yes, I'm over 65, as are a good number of friends).
I'll also note that the Malignant Carcinoma *lost* the popular vote by almost 3M votes, and then there was this small election a couple months ago....
You're so full of shit.
Unless you have proof, that's exactly what I believe.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm about two years away from my first check. If you take away my voting rights, you'll probably need to confiscated my guns first.
Of course you read where I said that I was just kidding and that my first check isn't far off either, right?
Still, there are a few that think we should take the vote away from anyone collecting any sort of welfare check. We still take voting rights away from convicted felons in many cases. IIRC, the founding fathers were pretty much OK limiting the vote to white, male property owners only.
I can think of other factors.
One, they know that Facebook and online sharing is dominated by young people and they don't want to look "old" for not fully participating, and wind up over-participating in sharing, in trying to fit in. So it's kind of an overcompensation.
The other is generational -- older people grew in a world without instantaneous communication that relied more on person-person information sharing, whether it was just personal gossip or whether it was of a more functional nature (ie, swapping stories with fellow salesmen or something). Combine this with the often sensationalist nature of fake news, and it's not hard to see why older people who might be more sharing oriented with information anyway wind up prioritizing the most "amazing" news first.
This is an easy one to solve.
Dear Facebook, Cut down on fake news. Turn off sharing for the elderly.
Your citizen, Anonymous Coward (Not older than 65)
Better still, suspend voting rights once the first Social Security check arrives.
Completely kidding here. My first check will be arriving soon.
Heh. This prompted me to recall a thought I had awhile back: I was in my 30's when I first ambled into /., and now I'm 60 (I know - inconceivable!). So... when do I lose my right to have mod points? : )
and got stuck with Clinton because the ruling class shoved her down my throat.
Say what you will about Clinton but she's a classic "Goldwater Girl" (look it up). As pure conservative as there every was. And I mean a _real_ conservative. She'd have kept everything the same, resisting change every step along the way. Trump's the radical, it just so happens he's a radical for mega corporations instead of working class Americans.
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Young people today are not old enough to remember decent, unbiased news. I have no facts to back it up but I would put the change at roughly the early 00's, maybe around 2001, in the early Autumn.
I did and my response probably should have indicated that. I didn't mean you in particular. But I often read snide comments here against elderly, and those young pricks can get the fuck off my lawn. :)
Just another day in Paradise
and the oil companies got their pipeline. After it was built the Military Industrial Complex wouldn't let us leave because, hey, free money.
Oil drives just about all of US foreign policy, especially in the middle east. You don't honestly think we're sanctioning Venezuela for "freedom" do you? But Chromsky doesn't really blame everything on oil. At the end of the day it's the relentless pursuit of profit by oligarchs that he harps on. He'll be happy to talk about the crap we did for Dole Fruit company if you care to ask him.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I did and my response probably should have indicated that. I didn't mean you in particular. But I often read snide comments here against elderly, and those young pricks can get the fuck off my lawn. :)
No problem.
Fast-forward to 2040. ... Today may be scary, but the future will be FAR worse, and it won't be just those old people who will believe this crap.
I hate to break this to you, sonny boy, but in 21 years you will be somewhere between middle aged and old!
You'll be one of "those old people who will believe this crap."
Well sonny boy, you missed my entire point, which was centered around the fact that this study assumes only "old people" are gullible. Technology will eventually become so good that NO human at any age will be able to discern the difference between real or fake. It won't matter how old ANY of us are by the time this happens. And it won't just be bullshit politics or fake porn videos we have to worry about. It'll be innocent people getting framed for crimes with video "evidence". Good luck defending yourself in the legal system when this kind of technology is available. We can't even get the dinosaurs behind the bench to understand how IP spoofing can make an innocent person look guilty. Fat chance you're going to convince a judge that HD-quality video clearly showing you committing a crime is fake.
And realistically, my estimate is probably inaccurate as hell. It won't take until 2040 for this to happen. I see it within the next 5-10 years.
On the bright side, many are calling out that this is fake news.
I find myself wondering where the people are who normally call out the other bullshit being presented here.
This is a self-selected group of people being "tested". In fact, this group of people are entirely defined by not being worried about privacy. Do you think that might skew the results somewhat? Further, what were the distributions of ages and what maths were used to normalize it all?
To me, this article is an agenda and the study is an excuse to air it and none of you seemed to call it for that this time. Am I wrong or is Slashdot sleeping today?
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen