3 ms·

> The study was centered around a Twitter field experiment in which a research team offered polite corrections, complete with links to solid evidence, in replie

> The study was centered around a Twitter field experiment in which a research team offered polite corrections, complete with links to solid evidence, in replies to flagrantly false tweets about politics. I wonder if it would be different if it had come from someone they knew in real life. I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. > “We might have expected that being corrected would shift one’s attention to accuracy. But instead, it seems that getting publicly corrected by another user shifted people’s attention away from accuracy — perhaps to other social factors such as embarrassment.” > “Future work should explore how to word corrections in order to maximize their impact, and how the source of the correction affects its impact,” I think this is important work, but I'm pessimistic about anything that will really be effective.

yorwba 5y ago
> I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. Alternatively, the people posting misinformation were terribly embarrassed, posting less on Twitter as a result, while the bots kept posting at their original schedule, thus decreasing average quality as a result. The paper seems to be lacking information about absolute tweet counts, so it's hard to tell what the change in their relative measures means in practice.
- joering2 5y ago
  My impression from being on twitter daily, is that some people (plenty) love to play stupid on Twitter, never mind their wisdom. I mean I find pilots, neurosurgeons, C-level execs, Harvard grads, etc, acting ridiculous, mostly related to politics but not only. I think its as pure trollism as it can get. And they never learn - I see someone laying down facts, using reason, logic etc.. then they are back spewing lies the next day. If you wanna turn the nicest person into a monster, just leave them on twitter for a week or two.
jerf 5y ago
"We might have expected that being corrected would shift one’s attention to accuracy." Really? Who would think that? Science requires an open mind, sure, but it doesn't require you to be some sort of idiot when formulating your hypotheses. To a first approximation, nobody responds to being corrected with a polite thank you and a shift to focus on accuracy, and everybody knows that. Whatever model of humanity they're operating with is less realistic than homo econimus. Are they using homo vulcanus?
- jsight 5y ago
  Exactly... I find that a lot of the folks posting the most misinformation have basically zero interest in whether it actually is true.
  - jerf 5y ago
    That's excessively specific. Most people, no further qualifiers, have zero interest in whether what they are posting is actually true. Most people are just socially signalling their preferred in group by what news they propagate. Labeling things "misinformation" is just another dodge for having to engage with whether or not something is true, or has a grain of truth in it that you might not like.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
> I wonder if it would be different if it had come from someone they knew in real life. I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. That's an interesting possibility, and I have a small anecdote in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that is slightly related. My mother, at the older end of the lately maligned "boomer" generation, would often rant with me on the phone about how obviously fake or ridiculous hoaxes were being spread on WhatsApp groups that she participated in. Even though she doesn't have a scientific background, she has a good instinct for the general ideas and how science works, and a very well-honed bullshit detector. After a while, maybe out of lockdown boredom, she started refuting the hoaxes when she could find good sources or science-based arguments to do so... and eventually, some of her friends and acquaintances who did tend to fall for false information, now ask her beforehand if something they have just been shared makes sense or not! Note however that this is not in the US, so at least she doesn't have to contend with overarching partisan identity lines regarding belief in this or that.
- bombcar 5y ago
  The US political lines make this horribly hard to do unless you ACTUALLY know the participants well - just take a look at the HN thread about the electric F150 to see acres of people unwilling to even consider that someone could own a pickup truck without being "in the wrong group".
MattGaiser 5y ago
> I wonder if it would be different if it had come from someone they knew in real life. I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. Anecdotally, they don't see it as truth being revealed, but me being "brainwashed", a "linear thinker" or "slave to orthodoxy."
bnralt 5y ago
> I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. When things become hyperpartisan, people can't see this revelation. When people read articles like this, I wouldn't be surprised if the reaction is mostly "Yes, I can't believe those people who disagree with me do this," and not a reflection on their own behavior. You can see this if you follow any political argument online. No one believes that the someone on an opposing side could have a valid argument, or could correctly point out their mistake. If a third-party observer tries to point out a mistake, people will usually cast them as the enemy and accuse them of spreading falsehoods. Walter Lippmann's excellent Public Opinion points out how it's difficult for people to be both interested in a topic and neutral. This excerpt touches on the issue: > "It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt whatever."
- Nursie 5y ago
  It’s very tempting, as in your insightful quote there, to form opinions on everything. However it would be nice if more of us said “I don’t have enough information to have an informed opinion here” more often. And I include myself in that. (Edit - yes I am a middle class Englishman!)
- jfengel 5y ago
  I'd point out that Bagehot wrote that in 1871. People don't change, though communications media sure do.

yorwba 5y ago

> I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. Alternatively, the people posting misinformation were terribly embarrassed, posting less on Twitter as a result, while the bots kept posting at their original schedule, thus decreasing average quality as a result. The paper seems to be lacking information about absolute tweet counts, so it's hard to tell what the change in their relative measures means in practice.

joering2 5y ago
My impression from being on twitter daily, is that some people (plenty) love to play stupid on Twitter, never mind their wisdom. I mean I find pilots, neurosurgeons, C-level execs, Harvard grads, etc, acting ridiculous, mostly related to politics but not only. I think its as pure trollism as it can get. And they never learn - I see someone laying down facts, using reason, logic etc.. then they are back spewing lies the next day. If you wanna turn the nicest person into a monster, just leave them on twitter for a week or two.

jerf 5y ago

"We might have expected that being corrected would shift one’s attention to accuracy." Really? Who would think that? Science requires an open mind, sure, but it doesn't require you to be some sort of idiot when formulating your hypotheses. To a first approximation, nobody responds to being corrected with a polite thank you and a shift to focus on accuracy, and everybody knows that. Whatever model of humanity they're operating with is less realistic than homo econimus. Are they using homo vulcanus?

jsight 5y ago
Exactly... I find that a lot of the folks posting the most misinformation have basically zero interest in whether it actually is true.
- jerf 5y ago
  That's excessively specific. Most people, no further qualifiers, have zero interest in whether what they are posting is actually true. Most people are just socially signalling their preferred in group by what news they propagate. Labeling things "misinformation" is just another dodge for having to engage with whether or not something is true, or has a grain of truth in it that you might not like.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

> I wonder if it would be different if it had come from someone they knew in real life. I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. That's an interesting possibility, and I have a small anecdote in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that is slightly related. My mother, at the older end of the lately maligned "boomer" generation, would often rant with me on the phone about how obviously fake or ridiculous hoaxes were being spread on WhatsApp groups that she participated in. Even though she doesn't have a scientific background, she has a good instinct for the general ideas and how science works, and a very well-honed bullshit detector. After a while, maybe out of lockdown boredom, she started refuting the hoaxes when she could find good sources or science-based arguments to do so... and eventually, some of her friends and acquaintances who did tend to fall for false information, now ask her beforehand if something they have just been shared makes sense or not! Note however that this is not in the US, so at least she doesn't have to contend with overarching partisan identity lines regarding belief in this or that.

bombcar 5y ago
The US political lines make this horribly hard to do unless you ACTUALLY know the participants well - just take a look at the HN thread about the electric F150 to see acres of people unwilling to even consider that someone could own a pickup truck without being "in the wrong group".

MattGaiser 5y ago

> I wonder if it would be different if it had come from someone they knew in real life. I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. Anecdotally, they don't see it as truth being revealed, but me being "brainwashed", a "linear thinker" or "slave to orthodoxy."

bnralt 5y ago

> I guess I shouldn't be at this point, but I'm always surprised that the people posting the misinformation aren't terribly embarrassed about it when it's revealed. When things become hyperpartisan, people can't see this revelation. When people read articles like this, I wouldn't be surprised if the reaction is mostly "Yes, I can't believe those people who disagree with me do this," and not a reflection on their own behavior. You can see this if you follow any political argument online. No one believes that the someone on an opposing side could have a valid argument, or could correctly point out their mistake. If a third-party observer tries to point out a mistake, people will usually cast them as the enemy and accuse them of spreading falsehoods. Walter Lippmann's excellent Public Opinion points out how it's difficult for people to be both interested in a topic and neutral. This excerpt touches on the issue: > "It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt whatever."

Nursie 5y ago
It’s very tempting, as in your insightful quote there, to form opinions on everything. However it would be nice if more of us said “I don’t have enough information to have an informed opinion here” more often. And I include myself in that. (Edit - yes I am a middle class Englishman!)
jfengel 5y ago
I'd point out that Bagehot wrote that in 1871. People don't change, though communications media sure do.