Misinformation

Twitter has announced that user behavior, not simply tweet content, will now be a factor in the way conversations are modified, or even blocked from general consumption. Content from users could be demoted by the platform's algorithm if the users have been blocked frequently, if they have multiple accounts using the same IP address, or if they regularly tweet to a large number of accounts that they don't follow.

About 1,800 students from 81 countries competed in the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held this year in Pittsburgh. One high-school student's project was aimed at combating fake news after he says he nearly fell for a false headline on Facebook. Ryan Beam says he almost believed a headline about the Pope endorsing Donald Trump (and indeed, it was untrue), which got him to thinking of ways to look at the fake news situation for himself. His study found that people who identified themselves as Independents were the least likely to share misinformation.

This may not surprise you, but during disasters, Twitter is full of false information. When confronted with falsehoods, “86 to 91 percent of the users spread the false news by retweeting or liking,” reports a new study from the University at Buffalo. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how apt Twitter users are at debunking falsehoods during disasters,” said Jun Zhuang, associate professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the school, and the lead author of the study. “Unfortunately, the results paint a less-than-flattering picture”.

National Public Radio recently interviewed the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, about his thoughts on fake news online. It is interesting to remember that Wikipedia used to be the sole subject of so many teachers’ ire because students often used information from the site in their reports without vetting it, but now that seems almost quaint in the face of other fake news scandals.

Wales feels we all need to be skeptical of the sources of things we share online. He said many times people will find a story that confirms what they already believe about a particular subject, so they go ahead and share it. But the truth is, anyone could have written that article, and without a quick google search to vet the sources, you could just be perpetuating the problem.

Twitter and Facebook are supporting the Honest Ads Act, a proposal that calls for platforms with a minimum of 50 million users to retain and make available for public viewing all political ads bought by groups investing more than $500. The bill would also require political ads to be labeled with "clear and conspicuous" disclosures and would require that platforms make "reasonable efforts" to prevent ads from being bought by foreign agencies.

Are you curious about the Russian social media disinformation campaigns that have been a hot topic in the news recently? The Hamilton 68 dashboard tracks Russian social media in real time as it appears on Twitter. Named after Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper 68 (on the importance of "protecting America’s electoral process from foreign meddling"), the dashboard initially tracked election-related tweets but has since expanded to additional topics, such as the Parkland school shooting. It is an interesting tool to look at with your kids when talking about misinformation online.