Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook

technologyreview.com

18 points·rajbala··8 comments

Week-old article, good insight; very relevant in Italy were Beppe Grillo uses social media like a wild-fire -- and has failed to deliver change quite dramatically.

Shame that there isn’t more on the social class (age, gender, occupation, family situation, and position on the social graph) of that more sensitive population.

Reminds me of Duncan Watts metaphor: You don't estimate the size of a forest fire by the size of the match…

In my opinion everyone should always be skeptical but they should not blindly defend a claim without proper sources and sufficient evidence.

I've been called a conspiracy theorist before and it's not a nice feeling since that phrase has such a negative connotation and is often associated with crazy people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories

I'm surprised that there are not more listed for the CIA and other paramilitary organizations, they've done some crazy stuff over the past 60 years.

Wow didn't know MIT was a pawn in the COINTELPRO.

One of the axis is labelled "PDF" without an explanation for what that is. Did they just need a random graphic? Is this a Lisa Holst article?

From original paper[0]:

Figure 2. Post lifetime/Probability density function, grouped by page type, of the temporal distance between the first and last comments of the post. Posts with qualitatively different topics (alternative information, political activism, and main stream news) show a similar behavior.

[0] http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3344

Thanks. My spouse tells me I'm bad at finding things too.

You found a wife, so that can't be unconditionally true :P.

This report is probably put out by some secret organization. It's part of the conspiracy!

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