Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online | Hacker News Reader

Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online

nytimes.com

24 pointsmetermaid15 comments

False rumors are able to spread throughout a large population before being debunked. Corrections, however, are only really able to spread to people who previously saw the rumor. Furthermore, many people who shared the rumor may be less likely to share the correction, since it makes them look gullible for sharing the unverified rumor in the first place. So it's much harder for a correction to spread virally.

If there were a system in place so that false rumors could be debunked in real-time, in-line (as opposed to using a separate retroactive correction), they would be less likely to spread as far. The closest thing I can think of would be something like Genius.

You would need a system to decide which debunkings were legitimate.

Long ago debunked rumors spread just as fast.

When I was in MIDDLE SCHOOL two decades ago there was a rumor spreading around saying gangs kill people who flash their headlights at cars who drive around without their lights on at night.

According to Wikipedia it is older than that, it has been around since the 80s[1].

This is completely false and has been debunked for an extremely long time.

However about 6 months ago it was being shared ALL OVER my Facebook feed like it was new "news." All anyone had to do was take TWO SECONDS to see if what they were sharing was true or not. That's asking too much. I don't think anyone cares they are spreading false information.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlight_flashing#Urban_legend

There is a lot of reaction to the headline here (hmm, maybe rumors spread through headlines), but I am curious about a new Web-based service mentioned in the article text, namely the service called Emergent.

http://www.emergent.info/

I saw another news report that was mostly but not entirely about Emergent the other day, and shared that story on my Facebook wall. Evidently the people who run Emergent are good at press relations.

I post information about things like this on my Facebook wall because I try to be PREVENTIVE about rumors. I don't want rumors to be circulating among my friends. Both on Facebook and here on Hacker News, I try to post stories and articles about truth-finding and rationale thinking and about little known historical and scientific facts that can be used to examine commonplace rumors. Some of the postings appear to be ignored, but others appear to have some uptake and to prevent subsequent belief in the latest rumor going around. We can all do our part. We can enjoy working proactively to help one another think better and to know more facts and to practice more thoughtful examination of rumors.

Rumors outrace truth, online or not; an observation allegedly made over 100 years ago by Mark Twain long before DARPA got a bright idea about networking: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” [0]

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/76-a-lie-can-travel-half-wa...

This quote is incredibly meta because while Mark Twain is the person whom it is most often attributed, he certainly wasn't the person to first say it and may have never said it at all.[0]

[0] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

This is a fun saying, and long precedes air travel, but Mark Twain probably was not the first person to say it. (Professional researchers on quotations and their transmission say that in English no one is more likely to have a pithy quotation falsely attributed to him than Mark Twain, so I immediately looked this up.) The origin of this saying is hard to trace.[1]

[1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

http://freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies...

False rumors spread fast because most of them are juicy or salacious. I bet boring rumors (true of false) don't spread at all.

Try this one on for size:

Dental studies show people who floss regularly have 3% less cavities than those who don't.

For instance, the missing Libyan jetliner story has been shared more than 140,000 times despite being questioned by the respected rumor-tracking website Snopes ...... the Snopes page on the jetliner story has been shared only 735 times since it was revised to classify the rumor false, a small fraction of the circulation of articles endorsing the claim.

This example shows the correction for a rumor is much less popular than the rumor itself. I'm not convinced that his shows that true stories are less popular or less engaging than rumors. It shows that people are more responsive to positive claims than negative ones.

A stronger analysis would look at the top 100 shared/liked stories in a timeframe. Then determine the ratio of rumor to fact amongst this set of stories.

Something else to consider: I read the article and did not question the factual basis of the claims made. Even gave it an uptick on HN. But I didn't check the sources, even though they are conveniently linked throughout the article. As far as I can tell, this makes me no different than the fella on Facebook who likes a story without checking it out. I'm doing as much work as he is. Right-leaning conspiracy theories feel right to him. Systemic cognitive biases that effect the masses (but surely not me!) feel right to me.

It seems to me that the obvious answer to the question of why rumors are spread more than truth is that spreading truth requires using enough effort to discover the truth and spreading rumors requires no such effort.

It takes someone two seconds to click share on some garbage article, it takes another person a minute or two of Googling to see if something is true or not. Laziness is going to win out with more people than effort.

Not only does fact-checking take longer than blindly clicking "share", fact checkers are vastly outnumbered by blind-sharers. Of course the former is probably a big influence on the latter.

One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it. If only more people paid attention...

> One of the things that really impresses me about Facebook lately is how often the first "suggested article" link under a bogus story is another story debunking it

I feel like Facebook should improve their related links system to inform a poster about them _before_ they post.

Most people don't suspect they're being lied to, they're no less likely to research a factual article than one that is complete bullshit. The simple reason rumors are shared more often is that rumors are usually more interesting.

This is similar to a debate technique known as the "gish gallop". The idea is that you use your debate time to make many claims that are false or half-true which will take longer and can be more difficult to debunk than to simply state the claim. This is effective in formal debates where each debater's time is limited , so that your opponent is forced to spend most of their time defensively rather than advancing their own argument.

To get caught up in, What is truth? isn't just a philosophical journey, it's often the first trap in another's scheme.

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