{"id":1721,"date":"2016-11-17T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T23:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.coldstreams.com\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2016-11-17T23:38:10","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T23:38:10","slug":"social-media-users-tend-to-share-news-that-confirms-their-beliefs-even-if-the-news-is-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2016\/11\/17\/social-media-users-tend-to-share-news-that-confirms-their-beliefs-even-if-the-news-is-false\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media users tend to share news that confirms their beliefs, even if the news is false"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>If internet users are predisposed to believe false information that confirms their prejudices \u2014 and if they enthusiastically take part in spreading conspiracy theories \u2014 then falsehoods may be endemic to mass online communication platforms. This issue is more difficult for Facebook, whose algorithms rely heavily on a social signal that comes from what a user\u2019s friends are sharing. If its users promote unreliable information \u2014 particularly if it is not easily categorised as \u201cnews\u201d \u2014 it will spread rapidly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/b4699322-ace2-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122\">US tech groups scramble with post-election soul-searching<\/a><\/em><br \/>\n<em>&#8220;Social media users tend to share news that confirms their beliefs<\/em>&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; just like I am doing with this post!<br \/>\nVery gratifying to see wide spread recognition of the harms being caused by social media sharing and fake and exaggerated news spread as propaganda.<br \/>\nThe problem, however, is not limited to political topics. Fake posts cover a wide genre of topics, from politics to science to humor to engineering. So far the news media only sees the problem as a political propaganda issue &#8211; but this challenge for social media platforms is much deeper than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If internet users are predisposed to believe false information that confirms their prejudices \u2014 and if they enthusiastically take part in spreading conspiracy theories \u2014 then falsehoods may be endemic to mass online communication platforms. This issue is more difficult for Facebook, whose algorithms rely heavily on a social signal that comes from what a user\u2019s friends are sharing. If its users promote unreliable information \u2014 particularly if it is not easily categorised as \u201cnews\u201d \u2014 it will spread rapidly&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2016\/11\/17\/social-media-users-tend-to-share-news-that-confirms-their-beliefs-even-if-the-news-is-false\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,42,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-propaganda-methods","category-social-media","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}