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In addition to identifying the network, the authors also calculate that taking down as few as ten influential accounts can halve the retweets of misinformation.
by allenz 8y ago
In addition to identifying the network, the authors also calculate that taking down as few as ten influential accounts can halve the retweets of misinformation. I'm not convinced that it's quite that easy, because the network would respond and adapt, but it's still an eye-opening demonstration of the power of social media companies.
The paper also finds that many misinformation accounts are not bots. Currently, misinformation is not a bannable offense for most social networks. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube leaders have said, verbatim, that they don't want to be "arbiters of truth". Of course, that leaves open the question of what responsibility they have and what actions they should take.
- makomk 8y agoOne problem with making misinformation a bannable offense on Twitter is that they'd have to ban so many mainstream journalists. (Seriously, it's obnoxious how many totally bogus viral claims they start and spread on Twitter; some combination of wide reach, trust, and never bothering to verify anything they post on social media.)
- tptacek 8y agoCite an example of a mainstream journalist propagating a viral claim that any reasonable person should have known was false? That's what misinformation networks do.
- pjc50 8y agoThere's a lot of what we might call "uncritical claim reporting" going on, where a journalist accurately reports that someone said something without any kind of regard for how implausible that is. Lot of this going on in Brexit, for example. The "£350m for the NHS bus" which rested on at least three ludicrous assumptions. Edit: let's have a look at https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1001158920663109632 https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1001158920663109632 - Andrew Neil is Chairman of the Spectator (important "serious" rightwing politics magazine) and a BBC presenter. He's accusing the NYT of "Stalinism". One of these has to be wrong.
- makomk 8y agoThere's that too, of course, but I mean that they can literally - for instance - get tens of thousands of retweets by posting a photoshopped photo on their verified Twitter account tied to their employer that happens to go viral because it confirms people's existing beliefs, and that doesn't hurt their career in the slighest: https://archive.is/vx4z1 https://archive.is/vx4z1 (I've even caught at least one journalist just outright making stuff up on Twitter, though I can't remember who and when off-hand.) Oh, at least ten thousand of those retweets were post-correction, as is usual on Twitter.
- Gatellicited 8y agohttp://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-finished-at-politico-over-obscene-trump-tweet.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-fin... Jewess Julia Ioffe, regular scribbler for The Atlantic and described by the Guardian as "one of America’s top feature writers", whom I trust qualifies as mainstream, made a tweet promoting the false story that Trump was to appoint his daughter to an office conventionally held by the First Lady. Now, this claim seems unreasonable to me, but I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates. Perhaps you can. https://archive.is/nN00G https://archive.is/nN00G Forbes writer Frances Coppola who has appeared as an authority on BBC's Newsnight floats the nutty theory that "anti-immigration" groups are somehow orchestrating or otherwise inducing the mass rapes committed by so-called refugees in Germany. Now, here's a challenge for you and anyone else brave enough to expose themselves to opposing thoughts: find me one article on Breitbart London or The Daily Stormer, excluding any manifest satire, that is demonstrably, objectively false.
- toxic_ 8y agoVery well. Two examples, by no means the most egregious or significant, that readily come to mind. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-finished-at-politico-over-obscene-trump-tweet.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-fin... ADL Council member Julia Ioffe, regular scribbler for The Atlantic and described by the Guardian as "one of America’s top feature writers", whom I trust qualifies as mainstream, made a tweet promoting the false story that President Trump was to appoint his daughter to an office conventionally held by the First Lady. The claim seems unreasonable to me, but I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates. Perhaps you can. https://archive.is/nN00G https://archive.is/nN00G Forbes writer Frances Coppola who has appeared as an authority on BBC's Newsnight floats the quite nutty theory that "anti-immigration" groups are somehow orchestrating or otherwise inducing the mass rapes committed by so-called refugees in Germany. Now, here's a challenge for you and anyone else brave enough to expose themselves to opposing thoughts: find me one article on Breitbart or The Daily Stormer, excluding any manifest satire, that is demonstrably, objectively false.
- heroprotagonist 8y ago> I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates Was that really necessary? Casual racism completely undermines any point you might be trying to make.
- pvg 8y agoThe point they're trying to make is 'I'm a Nazi'. Should just be nuked offsite.
- stordoff 8y agoThere's also the question of what is misinformation? You have a continuum from differences of opinion, to people being mistaken, to deliberate misinformation. Where do you (reliably) draw the line? I can see why they wouldn't want them to be "arbiters of truth" -- I'm not sure I would want them to be either.
- allenz 8y agoI agree that it's a difficult social and political problem. Interestingly, companies are fine banning hate speech, for which the same can be said. There might be better solutions. One idea is to pay nonpartisan organizations to fact check viral posts. Another is to reduce the use of engagement as a metric, which tends to promote emotionally charged rather than factual content. For example, in January Facebook committed to prioritizing "meaningful social interactions".
- optimuspaul 8y agoI'm not sure there is a question about what it is. Misinformation is what it is, information that is wrong, it is false information. Peoples opinions cannot be misinformation, they are opinions. I do agree there is a gray area between people being mistaken and deliberate misinformation, but there is no need to draw a line there, both should be addressed. People should be corrected and misinformation should not be spread further.
- Bromskloss 8y agoEven someone's honest attempt at presenting the truth can be considered, by someone else, to be worded in a misleading way.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- baud147258 8y agoMisinformation can be true information, but presented in a way to mislead the reader.