How interesting. The title of the report itself is "false news". It's not the "truth" or "falsity" of the news that affects the speed of the spread, but the no

How interesting. The title of the report itself is "false news". It's not the "truth" or "falsity" of the news that affects the speed of the spread, but the novelty. "We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information." Of course more "novel/interesting/salacious/etc" news travels faster. That's why the authors of the study created a "novel" headline. The only interesting part is that rather than bots/algorithms/etc, it's the humans primarily responsible for the spread of novel news. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it." I bet the true news about 9/11 attacks spread just as fast as the Orson Welles false news about Martian invasion since they were both equally novel.