Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#11

Post by tokenadult » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

There is a lot of reaction to the headline here (hmm, maybe rumors spread through headlines), but I am curious about a new Web-based service mentioned in the article text, namely the service called Emergent.

http://www.emergent.info/

I saw another news report that was mostly but not entirely about Emergent the other day, and shared that story on my Facebook wall. Evidently the people who run Emergent are good at press relations.

I post information about things like this on my Facebook wall because I try to be PREVENTIVE about rumors. I don't want rumors to be circulating among my friends. Both on Facebook and here on Hacker News, I try to post stories and articles about truth-finding and rationale thinking and about little known historical and scientific facts that can be used to examine commonplace rumors. Some of the postings appear to be ignored, but others appear to have some uptake and to prevent subsequent belief in the latest rumor going around. We can all do our part. We can enjoy working proactively to help one another think better and to know more facts and to practice more thoughtful examination of rumors.

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#12

Post by slg » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 9:36 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #6

Rumors outrace truth, online or not; an observation allegedly made over 100 years ago by Mark Twain long before DARPA got a bright idea about networking: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” [0] [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76-a-lie-can-travel-half-wa...

This quote is incredibly meta because while Mark Twain is the person whom it is most often attributed, he certainly wasn't the person to first say it and may have never said it at all.[0]

[0] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#13

Post by tokenadult » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #6

Rumors outrace truth, online or not; an observation allegedly made over 100 years ago by Mark Twain long before DARPA got a bright idea about networking: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” [0] [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76-a-lie-can-travel-half-wa...

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

This is a fun saying, and long precedes air travel, but Mark Twain probably was not the first person to say it. (Professional researchers on quotations and their transmission say that in English no one is more likely to have a pithy quotation falsely attributed to him than Mark Twain, so I immediately looked this up.) The origin of this saying is hard to trace.[1]

[1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

http://freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies...

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#14

Post by eric_h » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

drcube wrote: post #3

sumeno wrote: post #2

It seems to me that the obvious answer to the question of why rumors are spread more than truth is that spreading truth requires using enough effort to discover the truth and spreading rumors requires no such effort. It takes someone two seconds to click share on some garbage article, it takes another person a minute or two of Googling to see if something is true or not. Laziness is going to win out with more people…

Not only does fact-checking take longer than blindly clicking "share", fact checkers are vastly outnumbered by blind-sharers. Of course the former is probably a big influence on the latter. One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it. If only more people paid attention...

> One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it

I feel like Facebook should improve their related links system to inform a poster about them _before_ they post.

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#15

Post by chenelson » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 10:34 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #2

It seems to me that the obvious answer to the question of why rumors are spread more than truth is that spreading truth requires using enough effort to discover the truth and spreading rumors requires no such effort. It takes someone two seconds to click share on some garbage article, it takes another person a minute or two of Googling to see if something is true or not. Laziness is going to win out with more people…

To get caught up in, What is truth? isn't just a philosophical journey, it's often the first trap in another's scheme.

Re: Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

#16

Post by leepowers » Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 11:18 PM UTC

For instance, the missing Libyan jetliner story has been shared more than 140,000 times despite being questioned by the respected rumor-tracking website Snopes ...... the Snopes page on the jetliner story has been shared only 735 times since it was revised to classify the rumor false, a small fraction of the circulation of articles endorsing the claim.

This example shows the correction for a rumor is much less popular than the rumor itself. I'm not convinced that his shows that true stories are less popular or less engaging than rumors. It shows that people are more responsive to positive claims than negative ones.

A stronger analysis would look at the top 100 shared/liked stories in a timeframe. Then determine the ratio of rumor to fact amongst this set of stories.

Something else to consider: I read the article and did not question the factual basis of the claims made. Even gave it an uptick on HN. But I didn't check the sources, even though they are conveniently linked throughout the article. As far as I can tell, this makes me no different than the fella on Facebook who likes a story without checking it out. I'm doing as much work as he is. Right-leaning conspiracy theories feel right to him. Systemic cognitive biases that effect the masses (but surely not me!) feel right to me.