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Fake news and the way it spreads on social media is emerging as one of the great threats to modern society. In recent times, fake news has been used to manipulate stock markets, make people choose dangerous health-care options, and manipulate elections, including last year's presidential election in the U.S.
Clearly, there is an urgent need for a way to limit the diffusion of fake news. And that raises an important question: how does fake news spread in the first place?
Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Chengcheng Shao and pals at Indiana University in Bloomington. For the first time, these guys have systematically studied how fake news spreads on Twitter and provide a unique window into this murky world. Their work suggests clear strategies for controlling this epidemic.
Journal Reference:
arxiv.org/abs/1707.07592: The Spread of Fake News by Social Bots
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:17AM (11 children)
If their IQ is too low, education won't bite unfortunately.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by unauthorized on Thursday August 10 2017, @03:41AM (10 children)
Herd immunity also works with viral ideas. You only need a critical mass of the populace not buying bullshit for bullshit to become ineffective as a driver of society.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:32AM (7 children)
I noticed you avoided defining what constitutes a critical mass.
We educate a significant percentage of young people in this country. Most of them well beyond the level needed to function in the world, and spot bullshit.
You would think we had some approximation of a critical mass by now.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:52AM (2 children)
But after the Not-so great Recession under Reagan, we gave up on this and starting education for STEM. This produces a bunch of technocrats that could not thing their way out of a sexist stereotyping situation. And this is why these same under-educated folks voted for a grifter flim-flam real-estate developer. Any other questions?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:11AM (1 child)
Elite shits on the productive public, response is had. Not that complicated.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:13AM
Poor kazss, not elite. Words hard to write. Comment he did. Not Complicated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:28AM
We educate them at a very basic level and anything even remotely complex is taught using rote memorization and mostly forgotten. The best you can say about this is that it's better than nothing, though maybe you could also throw in a 'At least we're better than Somalia!' for good measure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @07:44AM
-took because it leads kids to disobey their parents
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:17AM
No, you school them. Americans are vastly under-educated relative to the amount of time spent in education institutions.
Furthermore, it's not enough to just tick the "spent X years in education" checkbox, it also matters what kind of education you receive. There are many key intellectual skills that seem to lack in American education, such as poor civic knowledge, inadequate logic training (and I mean practical, not just formal), being trained with anti-patterns of logic, lack of research skills, under-developed intuition for identifying deceptive rhetoric, etc...
Of course, many of these skills are also undesirable for the powers-that-be, which could be contributing factor as to why they aren't there, but that's speculation on my part.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:12AM
No, you don't educate them. you just tame them.
With a sizable loan already at the start in their adult life, the likelihood is high they learn to obey and eat whatever bullshit those applying the golden rule rain on them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:18AM (1 child)
Leadership, group think, leader-vs-follower ratio, overrating source over content, not checking etc also plays in. And with internet those herds instead becomes gigantic multidimensional Venn diagram filter bubbles bypassing most protections.
The unfortunately conclusion might be that some people just are not up to handing internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:23AM
"Handing" internet? But down that tablet full of porn, young man! You will go blind! (Can see you are already almost there, politically.)