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The spread of true and false news online

science.sciencemag.org

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Re: The spread of true and false news online

#21

Post by kbenson »

stcredzero wrote: post #15
dgut wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link.

Here's another, with fairly good voluntary moderation: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/

Wow, that's an interesting sub. They've formalized a lot of the HN community standards into hard rules, and brutally enforce them. For example, this[1] post has 36 comments, and 10 of them were removed for either not being substantive, not backing up statements of fact with a source, or some other reason, and another is reminder of a top level comment to include sources.

I'm not sure they haven't gone too far to some degree here, especially since the offending comments were deleted, not just hidden, so it's hard to see whether the mods are justified or not in all cases.

I subbed in any case, so I guess I'll get a chance to see more to make a more informed decision.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/81f8wf/are...

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#22

Post by jconley »

Based on this study's conclusions it seems that the ability to easily retweet (or re-share on facebook) combined with social networks surfacing our engagement (e.g. JD liked this post) to our first degree network is really at the root of all of this.

I wonder how/if rumors used to spread on Twitter before retweet was a first party feature.

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#24

Post by devindotcom »

mattkevan wrote: post #23

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it” - Jonathan Swift, 1710 “...a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on” - Terry Pratchett, 2000

the pratchett quote actually dates to much earlier. it's been attributed to churchill and twain. I used the Swift quote in my writeup of this study, though!

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#25

Post by mattkevan »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10
3princip wrote: post #5

While not surprising that hyperbole and bombastic claims would fare better than run of the mill news stories or opinions, seems strange to consider all tweets as news stories. Also, their cited sources of truth are overtly biased with respect to politics.

"We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications." >> What cited sources of truth are overtly biased?

Bias = ‘I disagree’

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#26

Post by devindotcom »

3princip wrote: post #5

While not surprising that hyperbole and bombastic claims would fare better than run of the mill news stories or opinions, seems strange to consider all tweets as news stories. Also, their cited sources of truth are overtly biased with respect to politics.

The definition of tweets as news is explained in the paper. The bias allegation doesn't really hold up, and anyway the researchers independently verified and tested 13,000 more stories and found the same patterns.

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#27

Post by fortythirteen »

9889095r3jh wrote: post #20
fortythirteen wrote: post #14

Nothing has changed over the centuries but the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread. The term "fake news" is itself propaganda, playing to people's innate sense that they are not, in fact, irrational and emotional beings, and are somehow better than the "morons" who fall for false stories. The sad truth is that even the smartest of us are, in some degree, intellectually lazy and hold at least one false belief. Th…

"Nothing has changed over the centuries but the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread." This is true. We now have digital platforms which reward propaganda by spreading it faster. The speed and spread of false information has exponentially increased because social media distorts media coverage, rewarding sensational, emotionally charged content with greater reach in people's timelines and feeds. Rumors used to spr…

Did any smaller percentage of Americans go along with McCarthyism? The mechanisms of delivery are the excuse used to keep people blind to the faults that lay within.

Propaganda and its delivery methods only have the power you give them. We all have the ability to seek out truth.

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#28

Post by anigbrowl »

sjbase wrote: post #3

> It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1500 people and 20 times as long as falsehood to reach a cascade depth of 10. As the truth never diffused beyond a depth of 10, we saw that falsehood reached a depth of 19 nearly 10 times faster than the truth reached a depth of 10 The study attributes most of that force multiplier to novelty and surprise, where falsehood will always have an advantage;…

No, clickbaity headlines just make everything worse. On the other hand, knowing that fake news has much longer resharing chains is a valuable filtering tool.

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#29

Post by bostik »

barell wrote: post #8

It’s so easy to put anything on the internet and anyone could do that. I think most of the times is that people responsible for posting for bigger audience just don’t bother to check the source and publish news based on Joe Blogs tweet or post. The truth is there are not many good journalists who cares and it’s more about making clicks rather than produce rich content. Don’t think there is anything we can do about fa…

Media literacy is incredibly difficult.

It is difficult because independent thought is too demanding. Marketers, propagandists, and yes, even hard-core journalists all rely on this. The fake news phenomenon has always existed, but it is amplified by the ease of manufactured outrage. Instant and global spread of (mis)information makes containment practically impossible.

If you can spot good satire, you are probably more likely to be able to spot bogus news items too. But spotting satire is damn hard - and a really good satire is nearly indistinguishable from well done legitimate reporting and/or story telling.

Re: The spread of true and false news online

#30

Post by smichel17 »

stcredzero wrote: post #19
bmpafa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice site, but i'll never understand the thinking behind "let's ask if they want to receive notifications immediately upon first page-hit" does anyone actually click 'yes' to that prompt?

Notifications on websites are just the pop-ups of 2018.

There are some sites on which I appreciate them, but exclusively those are sites where I have accounts and would otherwise revive them over email or something. Anything that asks to show notifications on first load gets "never show".
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