11 ms·

> "A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the spread of fake news and real news on Twitter in a 2018 study published in the journal Scienc

by Reedx 7y ago

> "A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the spread of fake news and real news on Twitter in a 2018 study published in the journal Science. Looking at 126,000 tweets of news stories over the previous 11 years, they found that fake news stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories. Real news took about six times as long to reach a benchmark audience of 1,500 people as fake news did."

dqpb 7y ago
I think there is an information theoretic explanation for this. The content of fake news tends to be more surprising than factual news. It is surprising because it is less likely. Generally speaking, the more unlikely a message is, the more information it carries. Thus, fake news appears to have higher information content then factual news to people unable to detect that it's fake.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Wouldn't we just assume "fake news" is optimized for virality, being a contrivance in the first place.
  - Mathnerd314 7y ago
    Fiction is more popular than nonfiction generally, roughly 2x according to https://justpublishingadvice.com/is-writing-non-fiction-more-profitable/ https://justpublishingadvice.com/is-writing-non-fiction-more..., which is about the effect size of the Twitter study.
    - yesenadam 7y ago
      >Fiction is more popular than nonfiction generally, roughly 2x That stat refers to money spent buying new books and ebooks, I think. It excludes e.g. newspapers, journals, magazines, and online reading, like blogs and special-interest websites, doesn't it? An extremely large majority of which is non-fiction, I'm guessing.
  - dqpb 7y ago
    Yes. But the follow-up question is how is this news optimized for virality, moreso then factual news. I'm suggesting that it has a general information theoretic advantage.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  The spectacle of seeing a nominal fact-checking site go after an overtly satirical one has been an astounding result for our day. I like to point out the rose colored glasses of the early internet, when the awesome signal-to-noise ratio was going to have a catalytic effect on human knowledge. #Whoops
  - kibibu 7y ago
    Do you remember Bonsai Kitten, and the breathlessly horrified email campaigns against it? People have had difficulty determining real from fake for a long time.
    - esmi 7y ago
      It’s way older than that. This is just one I know off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many other, older, examples. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-life-today/fake-news-is-nothing-new/ https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-life-...
      - kibibu 7y ago
        Yes of course; but it's the earliest one I remember being a purely online phenomenon that suckered people in. Besides, of course, the stupid lists of factoids that used to get emailed around - duck quacks don't echo etc.
  - rosser 7y ago
    See Brandolini's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    I'm increasingly convinced that what I call "naive fact-checking" misses the forest for the trees. Facts matter, yes. But a false narrative, even, or especially where constructed at least in part on true facts, is vastly more significant. A characteristic of virtually all Big Lie Narratives is that they contain, often major, nuggets of truth. But the arrangement of narrative amonst these, and eventual insertion of false (or at the very least, unverifiable) facts, eventually proves these out. A classic example I've run across is "It's All a Rich Man's Lie", an epic 3h 40m YouTube conspiracy yarn which, at least in its first hour or so, sticks largely to the domain of underlying truths: yes, there are "secret societies" at Ivy League schools, yes, many major US industrial firms maintained operations or divisions in Nazi Germany, etc. But no, actually, Kennedy's "Secret Society" speech (mentioned about 20 minutes in) was not about the Yale Skull & Bones group, but instead about the Soviet Union, and its practice of leveraging unflattering or inconvenient reporting from the US itself against the US. (The question of whether or not Kennedy was right in asking for self-restraint on this basis is a matter for another discussion.) Often the individual elements and false narrative become apparent by pulling back ever so slightly from the presented story, and looking at the greater context of facts offered. A few paragraphs of surrounding context from the Kennedy speech ("catnip for conspiracy nuts" according to one source) make painfully clear that its topic is not what the conspiracy nuts would make it to be. The fact that such checking is expensive and takes time makes the fabricators' job all that much easier, and the debunkers' harder. Another interesting case is the "J.P. Morgan Bankers' Manifesto" hoax, by one Thomas W. Gilruth, first published in 1892, and still making the rounds on social media over 120 years later. I'd run across it by way of an meme whose message appealed to me, though thinking it might be too good to be true, I dug deeper. To my knowledge, this is the most substantial debunking of the Gilruth hoax ever published: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morgan_and_the_bankers_manifesto_of_1892_hoax/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morg...
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Fake news isn't bound to the limits of truth. Fake news can be generated with far greater volume than truth. Fake news can be specifically engineered to appeal to various cognitive biases promoting virality. Truth serves reality. Falsehood can, and very often does, serve specific partisan interests who have a hand in promoting its spread. These are four powerful factors favouring falsehoods and their dissemination.
  - popularwarfare 7y ago
    What you have to come to terms with is that there is not a single 'objective' truth but multiple often contradictory truths. Individual Perception and psychology in addition to cultural and social norms play a large role as well.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      I am very much at terms with that. There are also deliberate actions, evicenced in documents and testimony, to obscure objective truths. There is a distinction between reasonable differences of opinion, and abject falsehoods. The principle of anekāntavāda is of many sidedness. It is not of any sidedness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      There are many types of events where there exists an objective truth. 'humans went to the moon', for example, is a statement whose truth is objective. You may choose to believe this truth or not, but you can't say 'the truth is more complicated than that'. Of course 'Americans went to the moon to further the human condition' is an example of statement for which there is likely not an objective truth - the terms themselves are fuzzy, people usually have multiple reasons and contradictory feelings about their reasons etc. So if I post a story claiming Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring from a pizza place basement, that is unequivocally false. If I run a story saying Hillary Clinton is an evil person seeking to lead the country astray, that may or may not be true depending on many different factors, definitions, personal beliefs etc. It would be wrong to label it as fake news,for this reason.
leggomylibro 7y ago
"A lie can run 'round the world before the truth has got its boots on." There's a novel called The Truth that pokes fun at this idea through a story about the birth of daily newspapers and tabloids in a fictional city-state. The quote that I have in mind is a little long to format here, so I'll pastebin it: https://pastebin.com/T2YjtTN2 https://pastebin.com/T2YjtTN2
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Praise Terry! Hallowed be thy name! And that hard drive got what it deserved!
- phs318u 7y ago
  Great money quote: "what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds."
buboard 7y ago
Likely the fake news were more sensational

by Reedx 7y ago

dqpb 7y ago

I think there is an information theoretic explanation for this. The content of fake news tends to be more surprising than factual news. It is surprising because it is less likely. Generally speaking, the more unlikely a message is, the more information it carries. Thus, fake news appears to have higher information content then factual news to people unable to detect that it's fake.

newnewpdro 7y ago
Wouldn't we just assume "fake news" is optimized for virality, being a contrivance in the first place.
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  Fiction is more popular than nonfiction generally, roughly 2x according to https://justpublishingadvice.com/is-writing-non-fiction-more-profitable/ https://justpublishingadvice.com/is-writing-non-fiction-more..., which is about the effect size of the Twitter study.
  - yesenadam 7y ago
    >Fiction is more popular than nonfiction generally, roughly 2x That stat refers to money spent buying new books and ebooks, I think. It excludes e.g. newspapers, journals, magazines, and online reading, like blogs and special-interest websites, doesn't it? An extremely large majority of which is non-fiction, I'm guessing.
- dqpb 7y ago
  Yes. But the follow-up question is how is this news optimized for virality, moreso then factual news. I'm suggesting that it has a general information theoretic advantage.
smitty1e 7y ago
The spectacle of seeing a nominal fact-checking site go after an overtly satirical one has been an astounding result for our day. I like to point out the rose colored glasses of the early internet, when the awesome signal-to-noise ratio was going to have a catalytic effect on human knowledge. #Whoops
- kibibu 7y ago
  Do you remember Bonsai Kitten, and the breathlessly horrified email campaigns against it? People have had difficulty determining real from fake for a long time.
  - esmi 7y ago
    It’s way older than that. This is just one I know off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many other, older, examples. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-life-today/fake-news-is-nothing-new/ https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-life-...
    - kibibu 7y ago
      Yes of course; but it's the earliest one I remember being a purely online phenomenon that suckered people in. Besides, of course, the stupid lists of factoids that used to get emailed around - duck quacks don't echo etc.
- rosser 7y ago
  See Brandolini's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  I'm increasingly convinced that what I call "naive fact-checking" misses the forest for the trees. Facts matter, yes. But a false narrative, even, or especially where constructed at least in part on true facts, is vastly more significant. A characteristic of virtually all Big Lie Narratives is that they contain, often major, nuggets of truth. But the arrangement of narrative amonst these, and eventual insertion of false (or at the very least, unverifiable) facts, eventually proves these out. A classic example I've run across is "It's All a Rich Man's Lie", an epic 3h 40m YouTube conspiracy yarn which, at least in its first hour or so, sticks largely to the domain of underlying truths: yes, there are "secret societies" at Ivy League schools, yes, many major US industrial firms maintained operations or divisions in Nazi Germany, etc. But no, actually, Kennedy's "Secret Society" speech (mentioned about 20 minutes in) was not about the Yale Skull & Bones group, but instead about the Soviet Union, and its practice of leveraging unflattering or inconvenient reporting from the US itself against the US. (The question of whether or not Kennedy was right in asking for self-restraint on this basis is a matter for another discussion.) Often the individual elements and false narrative become apparent by pulling back ever so slightly from the presented story, and looking at the greater context of facts offered. A few paragraphs of surrounding context from the Kennedy speech ("catnip for conspiracy nuts" according to one source) make painfully clear that its topic is not what the conspiracy nuts would make it to be. The fact that such checking is expensive and takes time makes the fabricators' job all that much easier, and the debunkers' harder. Another interesting case is the "J.P. Morgan Bankers' Manifesto" hoax, by one Thomas W. Gilruth, first published in 1892, and still making the rounds on social media over 120 years later. I'd run across it by way of an meme whose message appealed to me, though thinking it might be too good to be true, I dug deeper. To my knowledge, this is the most substantial debunking of the Gilruth hoax ever published: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morgan_and_the_bankers_manifesto_of_1892_hoax/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/39w8u4/jp_morg...
dredmorbius 7y ago
Fake news isn't bound to the limits of truth. Fake news can be generated with far greater volume than truth. Fake news can be specifically engineered to appeal to various cognitive biases promoting virality. Truth serves reality. Falsehood can, and very often does, serve specific partisan interests who have a hand in promoting its spread. These are four powerful factors favouring falsehoods and their dissemination.
- popularwarfare 7y ago
  What you have to come to terms with is that there is not a single 'objective' truth but multiple often contradictory truths. Individual Perception and psychology in addition to cultural and social norms play a large role as well.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    I am very much at terms with that. There are also deliberate actions, evicenced in documents and testimony, to obscure objective truths. There is a distinction between reasonable differences of opinion, and abject falsehoods. The principle of anekāntavāda is of many sidedness. It is not of any sidedness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    There are many types of events where there exists an objective truth. 'humans went to the moon', for example, is a statement whose truth is objective. You may choose to believe this truth or not, but you can't say 'the truth is more complicated than that'. Of course 'Americans went to the moon to further the human condition' is an example of statement for which there is likely not an objective truth - the terms themselves are fuzzy, people usually have multiple reasons and contradictory feelings about their reasons etc. So if I post a story claiming Hillary Clinton is running a child sex trafficking ring from a pizza place basement, that is unequivocally false. If I run a story saying Hillary Clinton is an evil person seeking to lead the country astray, that may or may not be true depending on many different factors, definitions, personal beliefs etc. It would be wrong to label it as fake news,for this reason.

leggomylibro 7y ago

"A lie can run 'round the world before the truth has got its boots on." There's a novel called The Truth that pokes fun at this idea through a story about the birth of daily newspapers and tabloids in a fictional city-state. The quote that I have in mind is a little long to format here, so I'll pastebin it: https://pastebin.com/T2YjtTN2 https://pastebin.com/T2YjtTN2

SiempreViernes 7y ago
Praise Terry! Hallowed be thy name! And that hard drive got what it deserved!
phs318u 7y ago
Great money quote: "what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds."

buboard 7y ago

Likely the fake news were more sensational