On Twitter Fake News Gets More Traction Than Truth

“Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,” wrote Jonathan Swift in 1710. Now a group of scientists say they have found evidence Swift was right, at least when it comes to Twitter.

In the paper, published in the authoritative journal Science, three MIT researchers describe an analysis of a vast amount of Twitter data: more than 125,000 stories, tweeted more than 4.5 million times in total, all categorised as being true or false by at least one of six independent fact-checking organisations.

The findings make for unhappy reading. “Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information,” they write, “and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends or financial information.”

How much further? “Whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1,000 people, the top 1% of false-news cascades routinely diffused to between 1,000 and 100,000 people,” they write. In other words, true facts don’t get retweeted, while too-good-to-be-true claims are viral gold.

The researchers speculate that falsehoods spread so fast because they fulfil our desire for novelty. True news, hamstrung by the requirement that it has to have actually happened, is generally much alike, but fake stories can surprise and entertain with no limit.

The scientists posit that “when information is novel, it is not only surprising, but also more valuable, both from an information theoretic perspective, in that it provides the greatest aid to decision-making, and from a social perspective, as it conveys social status on one who is ‘in the know’, or has access to, unique ‘inside’ information.”

Despite recent focus on Twitter “bots”, automated accounts seemed to have little influence on the spread of false rumours. The researchers initially ran the analysis after removing all the bots they could find, but even when they added them back in, the overall conclusions remained the same.

The only major change was that bots sped up the spread of all news, true and false: “This suggests that false news spreads farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.

“This implies that misinformation containment policies should also emphasise behavioural interventions, like labelling and incentives to dissuade the spread of misinformation, rather than focusing exclusively on curtailing bots.”

Similarly, false news is not spread because of the prevalence of a few bad actors who deliberately set out to mislead. Instead, the distinction between the distribution speed of true and false rumours seems to be wholly down to the normal people in the middle of the chain: those who decide to hit retweet, or not, on any given tweet they may see.

Focusing just on reliable news organisations might help users avoid sharing fake rumours, if there were any agreement on which news organisations they were.

Instead, the researchers report, “there is no correlation between the degree to which the American public finds a source ‘reliable’ and the fraction of its verified stories which are true” as measured by Politifact.

Fox News is trusted by more than three times as many Americans as Bloomberg, while all the major TV networks are trusted by more Americans, and rated as less reliable, than the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Guardian

You Might Also Read: 

Prime Minister Wants A 'fake news' Rapid Response Team:

Fake News Is A Cybesecurity Threat For Businesses:

News E-models For Quality Journalism:

 

« Charities Are Vulnerable To Severe Cyber Attacks
Cybersecurity At Sea »

Infosecurity Europe
CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

Jooble

Jooble

Jooble is a job search aggregator operating in 71 countries worldwide. We simplify the job search process by displaying active job ads from major job boards and career sites across the internet.

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout enables cyber security professionals to reduce cyber risk to their organization with proactive security solutions, providing immediate improvement in security posture and ROI.

Syxsense

Syxsense

Syxsense brings together endpoint management and security for greater efficiency and collaboration between IT management and security teams.

Alvacomm

Alvacomm

Alvacomm offers holistic VIP cybersecurity services, providing comprehensive protection against cyber threats. Our solutions include risk assessment, threat detection, incident response.

Practice Labs

Practice Labs

Practice Labs is an IT competency hub, where live-lab environments give access to real equipment for hands-on practice of essential cybersecurity skills.

Portnox

Portnox

In 2007, Portnox set out to create one of the world’s easiest to use, most loved, value-driven network security solutions — and our customers will tell you we’ve succeeded.

Arsenal Insurance Company

Arsenal Insurance Company

Arsenal is an insurance provider based in Moscow, Russia. Services offered include Cyber Risk insurance.

Protiviti

Protiviti

Protiviti consulting solutions span critical business problems in technology, business process, analytics, risk, compliance, transactions and internal audit.

ThreatMark

ThreatMark

ThreatMark provides fraud detection solutions for digital banking and payments.

Virsec Systems

Virsec Systems

Virsec detects and remediates previously “indefensible” advanced memory-based attacks on critical applications and server endpoints.

Valire Software

Valire Software

Valire provide a solution for the automated detection of internal fraud.

Dutch Accreditation Council (RvA)

Dutch Accreditation Council (RvA)

RvA is the national accreditation body for the Netherlands. The directory of members provides details of organisations offering certification services for ISO 27001.

CM Blockchain Security Center

CM Blockchain Security Center

We are dedicated to building a healthier blockchain ecosystem, providing solutions to security technology, and helping those who practice in the area of blockchain to get insight into industry trends.

Optimum Speciality Risks

Optimum Speciality Risks

Optimum Speciality Risks are an experienced team of cyber insurance experts, backed by Lloyds of London.

Militus

Militus

Militus provides the only information security service available that learns and analyzes your network over time using a custom-built network-based toolset.

NorthRow

NorthRow

NorthRow provides digital transformation compliance solutions to help businesses manage regulatory and financial crime risks.

Oligo Security

Oligo Security

Oligo aims to streamline the usage of open source by making it secure and easy to protect. Through focusing developers on the relevant vulnerabilities we make the fixing process significantly shorter.

Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation

Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation

The Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation is Nepal's First Academic Research Institute to focus on understanding the overall Information Security of Nepalese Organizations.

Third Wave Innovations

Third Wave Innovations

Third Wave Innovations (formerly RCS Secure) offers a full spectrum of cybersecurity safeguards and IT services.

Relatech

Relatech

Relatech is a Digital Enabler Solution Knowledge (D.E.S.K.) Company that offers digital services and solutions dedicated to the digital transformation of businesses.

Prophet Security

Prophet Security

Prophet Security empowers organizations to triage, investigate, and respond to alerts with unparalleled speed and accuracy.