5 ms·

Misinformation on Facebook got 6x more clicks than factual news during election

26 points by hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
https://archive.is/6lAq3 https://archive.is/6lAq3
mikece 5y ago
We all want to be privy to knowledge that is not widely known, even hidden. It should come as no surprise that info that carries an air of "you're not going to see this on the mainstream!" will have an appeal. Heck, that's why I read HN first thing in the morning is because I'm going to see new here long before it shows up elsewhere, along with links to stories/tech you're just not going to find anywhere else. If Facebook it making people believe they have the Forbidden Fruit there's going to be a line of people demanding to have a bite.
zadokshi 5y ago
Isn't it already common knowledge that Right leaning readers are moving away from mainstream left wing leaning news sources. The rise of Brietbart, and similar sites that fact checkers dislike is hardly a surprise is it not? (Or is it? seriously, I would like to know, are people surprised that right wing sources are increasing in the wake of Trump?)
- smolder 5y ago
  The surprising part is the extent to which right wing news like what comes out of Murdoch's companies has become a vehicle for dissemination of obvious falsehoods --paranoid nonsense inconsistent with any evidence. Long ago, I used to think right wing politics were fundamentally rational and just carried a different view on how best to govern versus the left's. Nowadays I see little appeal to rationality, and a great deal of trust-destroying, desperately contrarian fiction masquerading as insight. Left wing sources have gotten worse, too, but don't seem as keen on making things up.
  - glanard_frugner 5y ago
    examples?
    - smolder 5y ago
      An easy example is the idea that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen. There's Obama birtherism, the Seth Rich thing, attributing all sorts of nonsense to Antifa. Coverage of COVID has been awful and very misleading from the start.
      - bronzeage 5y ago
        Just out of curiosity, what information about the integrity of the elections have you taken into consideration when coming into conclusion that the election was legitimate? How many of the arguments of the other side have you seen and rejected? Or did you just dismiss it out of hand?
      - glanard_frugner 5y ago
        i don’t think you can conclusively say there wasn’t something fishy about the 2020 election. the 2016 election was considered “stolen” or “hacked” by the losing party that year too
        smolder 5y ago
        I think every election is going to be fishy in the sense that the biased media outlets break stories in ways to manipulate voters towards one outcome or the other. Making voting more accessible to people with mail-in ballots will have had some affect, too, and most likely helped the democrats, just like closing polling stations and under-serving voters has helped the republicans in some cases. But was it cheating, or stealing? I don't think that qualifies at all. I definitely don't think the pandemic response and mail-in ballot measures were primarily some scheme to get more D votes. I wouldn't call Trumps 2016 win illegitimate either, but all the fake news coming from russian owned blogs and sockpuppets and targeting vulnerable voters was still something we needed to make a stink about and work to mitigate.
torstenvl 5y ago
> trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization Ha! https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/fauci-trump-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/fauci-trump-coronavi... https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-theory-comic-book-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/origins-coronavirus-letter-virologists-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/origins-coronavirus-le... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-c... Pay attention to the last two dates. NINE DAYS after this "trustworthy news source" said SARS-CoV-2 "almost certainly" didn't come from a lab, it tried to distance itself and the Democratic Party from that position, characterizing it as something from "last year." The politicization of news is not trustworthy. The editorialization in the headlines is not trustworthy. The dismissal of plausible hypotheses is not trustworthy. The doublespeak when the evidence is finally overwhelming is not trustworthy. The very premises of this study are flawed.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  I think you don't understand how reporting works. Those last two arricles are reporting what other people are saying. Neither one is CNN making a claim. You may think CNN is not a trustworthy news source, but both of those articles look fine to me.
  - 1MachineElf 5y ago
    >Those last two arricles are reporting what other people are saying. Neither one is CNN making a claim. That is CNN's proven strategy for pushing baseless narratives with plausible deniability.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    I understand your position. My response comes in two parts: First, I don't think it was necessary to make an ad hominem comment about me personally. What you think I "understand" is irrelevant and the comment was inflammatory. Second, if "almost certainly" is really "what other people are saying," can you direct me to the quote from one of those other people? It seems to me that this is indeed CNN's conclusion rather than someone else's actual words.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
This reminds me of the Gladiator movie scene after the first death in the colosseum “Are you not entertained!!” The grotesque disinformation internet is a mirror of our humanity.
chuckee 5y ago
While the article is easy to believe, I'd prefer it was phrased more precisely. For example: > news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources If a publisher is known for putting out misinformation (and what is the threshold?), that does not mean all their stories are false. To make the claim in the title, the shared articles would have to be individually evaluated for truthfulness. The second thing that stuck out to me (emphasis mine): > The researchers also found that the statistically significant misinformation boost is politically neutral — misinformation-trafficking pages on both the far left and the far right generated much more engagement from Facebook users than factual pages of any political slant. But publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories, the study found. The paragraph switches from talking about misinformation (which I understand to be information that is false), to misleading information, which is a far more vague categorization. Notably, any kind of disfavored statistic, that is grudgingly conceded to be factual, tends to be called "misleading", either for failing to adjust for enough factors, or for implying some cause or conspiracy, or for measuring something you shouldn't care about in the first place.
- suifbwish 5y ago
  Even though I know it is the case it never fails to shock me how naive and unquestioning people are when they read something. It’s like they feel the act of them reading it makes it likely to be true. If people then question or doubt it when the person just repeats it they get angry when it’s they that should have done that
egberts1 5y ago
I gravitate toward news articles with meaningful citation hyperlink(s) and not links that points to just its definition, or worse points to similarly but not related articles within their own web site.
glanard_frugner 5y ago
“misinformation”
- ratsmack 5y ago
  As defined by the ministry of truth, I presume.
rezbull 5y ago
Seems like misinformation pays
bronzeage 5y ago
There's a second side to misinformation. That side is the mainstream media censuring and suppressing true information. In my opinion, the whole "misinformation" scare tactic is just a way to increase information suppression. The media cries about misinformation so that when your friend attempts to bring suppressed information to your attention, you'll be primed by the "misinformation" propaganda to reject it outright just because of its source. This increases the polarization as huge proportion of the population is simply unaware of critical information. What kinds of suppressed information? - Information about covid early in the pandemic. Information about masks early during the pandemic (when the mainstream opinion was against them). - Information about the source of covid being the Wuhan lab. - Information about the safety of mail in voting (to remind you, they claimed before the election that fraud is super rare, 0.0001%, she shifted into a much weaker position of fraud happening frequently but not enough to change the result. ) - Information about hunter Biden laptop and about hunter Biden fbi investigation. - Information about the vaccines being nearly ready - they lied about it right up until the election, and proceeded to confirm the vaccines are ready just a week after the election! - Information about election irregularities. I can keep on going. The levels of information suppression that have been revealed in the last two years is unreal. What's even more astonishing is the "misinformation" campaign being so effective at making people construct their own information firewalls. They have managed to convince so many people to ignore true information from their friends because of a straw man "fake news".
krsdcbl 5y ago
So basically facebook is saying it's bo biggie that people mostly click & watch disinformation because they do scroll past a lot more memes ...

26 points by hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

https://archive.is/6lAq3 https://archive.is/6lAq3

We all want to be privy to knowledge that is not widely known, even hidden. It should come as no surprise that info that carries an air of "you're not going to see this on the mainstream!" will have an appeal. Heck, that's why I read HN first thing in the morning is because I'm going to see new here long before it shows up elsewhere, along with links to stories/tech you're just not going to find anywhere else. If Facebook it making people believe they have the Forbidden Fruit there's going to be a line of people demanding to have a bite.

zadokshi 5y ago

Isn't it already common knowledge that Right leaning readers are moving away from mainstream left wing leaning news sources. The rise of Brietbart, and similar sites that fact checkers dislike is hardly a surprise is it not? (Or is it? seriously, I would like to know, are people surprised that right wing sources are increasing in the wake of Trump?)

smolder 5y ago
The surprising part is the extent to which right wing news like what comes out of Murdoch's companies has become a vehicle for dissemination of obvious falsehoods --paranoid nonsense inconsistent with any evidence. Long ago, I used to think right wing politics were fundamentally rational and just carried a different view on how best to govern versus the left's. Nowadays I see little appeal to rationality, and a great deal of trust-destroying, desperately contrarian fiction masquerading as insight. Left wing sources have gotten worse, too, but don't seem as keen on making things up.
- glanard_frugner 5y ago
  examples?
  - smolder 5y ago
    An easy example is the idea that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen. There's Obama birtherism, the Seth Rich thing, attributing all sorts of nonsense to Antifa. Coverage of COVID has been awful and very misleading from the start.
    - bronzeage 5y ago
      Just out of curiosity, what information about the integrity of the elections have you taken into consideration when coming into conclusion that the election was legitimate? How many of the arguments of the other side have you seen and rejected? Or did you just dismiss it out of hand?
    - glanard_frugner 5y ago
      i don’t think you can conclusively say there wasn’t something fishy about the 2020 election. the 2016 election was considered “stolen” or “hacked” by the losing party that year too
      - smolder 5y ago
        I think every election is going to be fishy in the sense that the biased media outlets break stories in ways to manipulate voters towards one outcome or the other. Making voting more accessible to people with mail-in ballots will have had some affect, too, and most likely helped the democrats, just like closing polling stations and under-serving voters has helped the republicans in some cases. But was it cheating, or stealing? I don't think that qualifies at all. I definitely don't think the pandemic response and mail-in ballot measures were primarily some scheme to get more D votes. I wouldn't call Trumps 2016 win illegitimate either, but all the fake news coming from russian owned blogs and sockpuppets and targeting vulnerable voters was still something we needed to make a stink about and work to mitigate.

torstenvl 5y ago

> trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization Ha! https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/fauci-trump-coronavirus-wuhan-lab/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/fauci-trump-coronavi... https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-theory-comic-book-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/lab-leak-coronavirus-t... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/origins-coronavirus-letter-virologists-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/origins-coronavirus-le... https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-covid-origins/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/biden-intel-review-c... Pay attention to the last two dates. NINE DAYS after this "trustworthy news source" said SARS-CoV-2 "almost certainly" didn't come from a lab, it tried to distance itself and the Democratic Party from that position, characterizing it as something from "last year." The politicization of news is not trustworthy. The editorialization in the headlines is not trustworthy. The dismissal of plausible hypotheses is not trustworthy. The doublespeak when the evidence is finally overwhelming is not trustworthy. The very premises of this study are flawed.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
I think you don't understand how reporting works. Those last two arricles are reporting what other people are saying. Neither one is CNN making a claim. You may think CNN is not a trustworthy news source, but both of those articles look fine to me.
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  >Those last two arricles are reporting what other people are saying. Neither one is CNN making a claim. That is CNN's proven strategy for pushing baseless narratives with plausible deniability.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  I understand your position. My response comes in two parts: First, I don't think it was necessary to make an ad hominem comment about me personally. What you think I "understand" is irrelevant and the comment was inflammatory. Second, if "almost certainly" is really "what other people are saying," can you direct me to the quote from one of those other people? It seems to me that this is indeed CNN's conclusion rather than someone else's actual words.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

This reminds me of the Gladiator movie scene after the first death in the colosseum “Are you not entertained!!” The grotesque disinformation internet is a mirror of our humanity.

chuckee 5y ago

While the article is easy to believe, I'd prefer it was phrased more precisely. For example: > news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources If a publisher is known for putting out misinformation (and what is the threshold?), that does not mean all their stories are false. To make the claim in the title, the shared articles would have to be individually evaluated for truthfulness. The second thing that stuck out to me (emphasis mine): > The researchers also found that the statistically significant misinformation boost is politically neutral — misinformation-trafficking pages on both the far left and the far right generated much more engagement from Facebook users than factual pages of any political slant. But publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories, the study found. The paragraph switches from talking about misinformation (which I understand to be information that is false), to misleading information, which is a far more vague categorization. Notably, any kind of disfavored statistic, that is grudgingly conceded to be factual, tends to be called "misleading", either for failing to adjust for enough factors, or for implying some cause or conspiracy, or for measuring something you shouldn't care about in the first place.

suifbwish 5y ago
Even though I know it is the case it never fails to shock me how naive and unquestioning people are when they read something. It’s like they feel the act of them reading it makes it likely to be true. If people then question or doubt it when the person just repeats it they get angry when it’s they that should have done that

egberts1 5y ago

I gravitate toward news articles with meaningful citation hyperlink(s) and not links that points to just its definition, or worse points to similarly but not related articles within their own web site.

glanard_frugner 5y ago

“misinformation”

ratsmack 5y ago
As defined by the ministry of truth, I presume.

rezbull 5y ago

Seems like misinformation pays

bronzeage 5y ago

There's a second side to misinformation. That side is the mainstream media censuring and suppressing true information. In my opinion, the whole "misinformation" scare tactic is just a way to increase information suppression. The media cries about misinformation so that when your friend attempts to bring suppressed information to your attention, you'll be primed by the "misinformation" propaganda to reject it outright just because of its source. This increases the polarization as huge proportion of the population is simply unaware of critical information. What kinds of suppressed information? - Information about covid early in the pandemic. Information about masks early during the pandemic (when the mainstream opinion was against them). - Information about the source of covid being the Wuhan lab. - Information about the safety of mail in voting (to remind you, they claimed before the election that fraud is super rare, 0.0001%, she shifted into a much weaker position of fraud happening frequently but not enough to change the result. ) - Information about hunter Biden laptop and about hunter Biden fbi investigation. - Information about the vaccines being nearly ready - they lied about it right up until the election, and proceeded to confirm the vaccines are ready just a week after the election! - Information about election irregularities. I can keep on going. The levels of information suppression that have been revealed in the last two years is unreal. What's even more astonishing is the "misinformation" campaign being so effective at making people construct their own information firewalls. They have managed to convince so many people to ignore true information from their friends because of a straw man "fake news".

krsdcbl 5y ago

So basically facebook is saying it's bo biggie that people mostly click & watch disinformation because they do scroll past a lot more memes ...