Tiny number of 'supersharers' spread the majority of fake news

Removal of a few super spreaders is infinitely more feasible than having everyone else change their behavior

A normal adult needs to use to many tools and chase so many different types of education by themselves, off the top of my mind: financial, real estate, health, technology, purchasing habits, utilities providers, news and misinformation, nutrition, commonly applied scams.

Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal, and prosecute those that do it.

When you teach people to recognise fake news they will be able to recognise your fake news. What you want is to cut people from enemy fake news (or truth, they are enemy, it doesn't matter) so they will believe everything you say while enemy can't influence them.

"fake news" typically amounts to false rumors, amplifying unprovable/unsubstantiated claims. That's what needs to stop, and what is greatly damaging discourse.

I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts.

It’s basically a DDOS attack. It takes seconds especially with AI to generate bullshit but hours to debunk it.

I certainly haven’t thought of a way to address that imbalance.

China has entered the chat. Obviously HN is a western focused site, but it always fascinates me when people just assume Western ideas of freedom are just a solved problem.

Those freedoms, historically speaking, are very much not just a thing we should all expect will continue in perpetuity. So statements like “your ideas lost” sound a bit childish from a global perspective. Do I hope freedom of speech continues to prevail? Absolutely. Is it just the inevitable conclusion you suggest? Not at all.

And what about people who reject reality itself?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs

No? We are angry that the firehouse of falsehood is making civil discourse between Americans impossible.

Sneaky of you to slip that in there, new throwaway acct.

Volume is not equal to facts or truth.

Yes, censorship is dangerous.

But the article is NOT an argument for censorship.

Everyone knows the sagacious Mark Twain quote: "A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on".

Social media puts that effect on rocket fuel. When some cohorts are using that to consistently and disproportionally amplify lies, it is very reasonable to add a small amount of friction, or require someone to prioritize what they repost. This does zero to stop posting lies, it only forces them to select the highest quality — to them — set to repost.

It is no different from the restriction on this Hacker News site; if you post too much here, you get a message like "Please slow down, you're posting too fast.", and you cannot repost for several hours. I have not seen anyone crying "CENSORSHIP!!" over that restriction. I also doubt there exists anyone who would think that the discussion on Twitter is better than HN.

So, why are you crying "CENSORSHIP!!" about a similar proposal for other social media (and be sure to address how a restriction on volume has zero restriction on any specific content)?

I think what’s wrong about this narrative is the idea that fake news is good for the people spreading it. Like I don’t think that obsessing about the Russia investigation was great for liberals and I think there’s a ton of examples of Republican infighting that is the result of people believing things that aren’t true, and just like factually so. There’s a difference between spreading all sorts of malicious opinions about LGBT; and I’m not happy about that but whatever and the recent story of a woman who got elected to the school board to get the LGBT curricula out of schools, read the whole curricula, realized that there was no LGBT curricula in schools, told her supporters how happy she was to realize that and then was viciously attacked for it. Or the guy who actually attacked a pizza restaurant, or the Romney campaign being surprised they lost in 2012, because they believed a conservative propaganda site performing intentionally biased polling to show a not favorable result.

Like looking at the current American political situation, I think you could make a strong argument that fake news is worse for Republicans than it is for Democrats.

This ties right into your desire for tools, because tech companies don't actually want people using independent tools to access their systems. They're already giving us the tools they want us to use - poor ones designed around slowing us down, confusing our unadorned human brains, and creating a slow drip of partial accomplishment rather than letting us complete a task and move on. Attempts to even augment their tools with things like Adblock are met with a lot of grumbling and sometimes even outright blocking. Full blown third party clients (eg yt-dlp) are continually seen as a fringe thing, and churn between names/maintainers/hosts due to legal shakedowns. The nonsense of prior-restrained-based "API keys" runs roughshod over developers' thought processes. A sustainable ecosystem of independent third party clients in the mainstream app stores is essentially impossible - a wink, nod, and specious reference to trademark, DMCA, or CFAA is all it takes to get the other tech gatekeepers to collude.

Unfortunately, this all points to the only way we're fixing any of this is some kind of regulation. The centralized tech companies have set up their positions at a Schelling point of individual agency, and have heartily grown into the power vacuum. Like atoms in a gas, it's impossible for us to all just individually move in the same direction at the same time, and so the only way to get a lever big enough to move them is collective action via the government, as imperfect as that is.

Personally I'm in favor of antitrust enforcement that breaks up this bundling between hosting and client software (and hardware devices as well). They should be considered separate products, when developed at the same company be completely independent business units, with backroom communication (eg unpublished APIs) prohibited. I'd say this would get us 80% of the way there to having the choice of tools that don't themselves encourage the spreading of disinformation. Then additional functionality of automated filtering etc could grow organically on top of that, in a user-representing way. But for any of that to happen, the client ecosystems have to be freed first.

Setting aside the inflammatory tone of your take on this - I think your argument would be strengthened by an example or two of where you're suggesting the line should be drawn - this just is not how running social media sites currently works at all. Companies can and do censor user content all the time, for better or worse. What "tough cookies"? More like tough cookies for people that don't like living in a country where a third of the population believes we're ruled by baby blood drinking reptile people.

I just don't see how a site about the latest drama, crime, war, or tragedy happening at the moment anywhere on the planet or on the Internet can be good for anyone's mental health.

If you asked me, I'd say more social media should strive to be like Pinterest, where people don't share their wordy opinions nobody will be better off reading, they just share pictures of things that interest them (or in many cases pictures of products they're selling).

Like, if you're a gamer, which is the better site: one that keeps telling you about the latest drama among Twitch streamers, or one that just had 30 screenshots and short video clips of various games displayed on screen at the same time?

Very true.

I feel so sorry for the people who can not use the Scientific Method to determine the credibility of news sources.

Here is what I do: I find a news story from the source that is about events close to me. Then I go over and check. I hope you try this.

I test politicians the same way. I try to find video of them discussion something from my area, and then check it. If they lied about my local area, they probably lie about everything.

The distinction I’d draw is that email was a push model, but today it’s platforms that decide what we see. If platforms wanted, I think it’d be trivial for them to make a setting for their users to filter out politics/outrage/whatever

For example Reddit will (unprompted) put links to videos of police brutality on the home page when I’m not part of that subreddit.

To me this anti pattern reminds me of putting candy bars in the checkout lane — pitting me against my self control on purpose

For whatever reason, an employee in one of the lead administrative groups at 'HQ' was forwarding very high resolution photos of the previous day's events and the group email address they were using happened to include everyone in any organization that was in some way under the management chain, so anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 people likely received those pictures. They sent about three emails before stopping, or being stopped.

For better or worse, the people suffering from RSD have moved to Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSA7kKNu2Y

Eventually mainstream media came around, but they did a lot of damage to their credibility. Not to mention the whole Iraq having weapons of mass destruction narrative that many of us grew up seeing proven false firsthand.

At this point I just don’t trust anything. It’s fortunate to be of a scientific mindset, since you can make up your own mind with some confidence that you’re not crazy. That doesn’t really work for most people, which seems like the main problem you touch on.

It’s Pareto essentially. And yes it’s in everything. In any organization a well organized minority will exert power over the disorganized majority, or remainder of people.

It’s why you see ridiculous municipal codes, etc. Small but well organized groups of people create pressure to bring them into existence. Opposition to it is disorganized and apathetic. The minority group can’t be too small but because it’s small it’s easier to organize a larger group of outer supporters (sympathizers, useful idiots, etc) that will march with you on a nice Saturday afternoon, etc. Now your fringe idea looks like it is majority held and enough otherwise disinterested people say “sure, whatever”.

However, most things FB promotes (i.e. suggests, or that just shows up in my feed for no reason) are the same, and they are all there for the same reason. To increase engagement.

The problem is people uncritically believe the original source which is just someone saying something like "I just heard X is happening!" with no actual evidence at all.

They'd just wear nice clothes and be well groomed enough, bonus point if they're in uniform, and everybody would trust them.

Knowing who to trust has never been our forte.

And I think most people are also of a similar mindset, even if they might not necessarily realize it. It's how you get things like a democracy where everybody ostensibly votes for the candidate they want to win, and then we get a congressional approval rating that's trending to the single digits. [1] That's only possible because are extremely dissatisfied even when their guy and his party are both in control, otherwise it'd at least hover around 50%.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx

The so-called 1/9/90 rule posits that on a social media network or review site, only 1 percent of users will actively create content. Another 9 percent, the editors, will participate by commenting, rating or sharing the content. The other 90 percent watch, look and read without responding.

This is my experience as well. So also true on HN, where are majority are just lurkers. (Hi there lurkers, good time to get an account! ;)

I think if you are lurking you far more likely to just consume something without actively giving it a second thought. I think of the adagio that to really know something, you have to teach it (or being able to explain at least) and that doesn’t happen in passivity. It happens in dialogue.

It is a pretty common tactic for the spreaders of true misinformation to claim their position is dissent rather than lying, that they are the underdog and being ostracized for dissenting…

Getting you to question everything is part of what they want. The goal of misinformation is mistrust. It’s too difficult to question everything, see e.g., Brandolini’s Law.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I personally know highly educated people myself who are stuck in the misinformation rabbit hole. The problem with mistrust and conspiracy theory is that once it takes hold, it breaks people’s ability to evaluate trustworthy and even scientific sources. Don’t assume education is the key. Fake news is very, very effective, which is why they are doing it.

> Tiny number of 'supersharers' spread the majority of democracy

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Everyone from Daniel Patrick Moynihan all the way through to Mike Pence.

There are some things that are demonstrably true and untrue. Society gains nothing, and loses much, by simply throwing up our hands and saying "well, nothing to be done!" in the face of this.

> who decides what is the truth and whether they have the right to censor everything and everybody else

That is one heck of a leap.

Screaming the cries of censorship when faced with people who disagree--either on your point, your presentation of your point, or the facts underlying your point--is escaping to a place where your position is no longer the one being debated, it's the "terms of the debate." Thus, one no longer needs to defend their position; they can simply stand to the side and feign being the actual aggrieved party.

> I definitely don't like this trend of censorship, it's not what our western democracy is built upon.

It is not censorship. Censorship is not saying "you are incorrect about this and I am calling you out for it and encouraging others to take note of your being incorrect." Heck, censorship is not even being shouted down for one's beliefs. If you say something and other people yell at--or praise!--you for it, that's not censorship.

This article alone says there is no active censorship since people can, and do, merrily spread incorrect statements and half-baked "just asking questions" that even the Weekly World News would have found too preposterous to print.

The fact is, there are many bullshitters, and their bullshit isn't up for interpretation as you suggest.

There's also kind of an odd contradiction. This is an idea you don't like, and suggesting it should be stopped.

Edit: kudos for being reasonable and changing your mind! :)

> On twitter

is litterally in the papres title, they dont claim to represent public discourse in its entirety.

> Limitations and future directions

> Several limitations should be noted. First, our sample may contain systematic differences from a fully representative sample.

Your argument is nothing but a fluffy ad hoc reaction which ironically imho enables these supersharers.

Most Republicans didn't share misinformation about the 2020 U.S. presidential election on Twitter.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344339739_Internet_...

I could totally see this kind of thing being co-opted for spreading political messages.

Subject: Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way!

                    Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way!

                                Just as true today as it was when his book first came out.
                                He was, and still is, a brilliant businessman!
                                 Often we need to be reminded of Iococca's words.
                                 
                                 
                                Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes?  He's now 82 years old and has a new book, 'Where Have All The Leaders Gone?'.

                                Lee Iacocca Says: 

                                'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage with this so called president? We should be screaming bloody murder! We've got a gang of tax cheating clueless leftists trying to steer our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even run a ridiculous cash-for-clunkers program without losing $26 billion of the taxpayers' money, much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'trust me the economy is getting better..'

                                Better? You've got to be kidding. This is America , not the damned, 'Titanic'. I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the Democrats out along with Obama!' 

                                You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore..

                                The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs.. While we're fiddling in Afghanistan , Iran is completing their nuclear bombs and missiles and nobody seems to know what to do. And the liberal press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the ' America ' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you? 

                                I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest 'C' is Crisis! (Iacocca elaborates on nine C's of leadership, with crisis being the first.)

                                Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with thumb up your butt and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

                                On September 11, 2001, we needed a  strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A hell of a mess, so here's where we stand.

                                We're immersed in a bloody war now with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.  But our soldiers are dying daily.

                                We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the world, and it's getting worse every day! 

                                We've lost the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. 

                                Gas prices are going to skyrock again, and nobody in power has a lucid plan to open drilling to solve the problem.  This country has the largest oil reserves in the WORLD, and we cannot drill for it because the politicians have been bought by the flea-hugging environmentalists.  
                                 Our schools are in a complete disaster because of the teachers union. 

                                Our borders are like sieves and they want to give all illegals amnesty and free healthcare. 

                                The middle class is being squeezed to death every day. 

                                These are times that cry out for leadership.

                                But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

                                Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

                                We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

                                Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping the government will make it better for them.  Now, that's just crazy.. Deal with life.

                                Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, look what Obama did about it!
                                Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving theenergy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry. 

                                I have news for the Chicago gangsters in Congress. We didn't elect you to turn this country into a losing European Socialist state. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on NBC or CNN news will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

                                Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here.  I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope - I believe in America . In my lifetime, I've had the privilege of living through some of   America 's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: The 'Great Depression,' 'World War  II,' the 'Korean War,' the 'Kennedy Assassination,' the 'Vietnam War,' the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years since 9/11.

                                Make your own contribution by sending this to everyone you know and care about. It's our country, folks, and it's our future. Our future is at stake!!
                                ***********************************
                                LET'S GET THE MUSLIM ROOKIE OUT OF THE WHITEHOUSE!!!

… Ever met any rich people? There are some seriously confused rich people out there, let me tell you.