The “fake news” run faster than the real info

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AFP

Thursday, march 8, 2018 14:35

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Thursday, march 8, 2018 14:35

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The fake new – or “fake news” – travels faster on the internet than real information, but more because of the users themselves as “bots”, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

The study covers the years 2006 to 2017, and on some 126 000 information, true or false, posted on Twitter by 3 million people over 4.5 million times.

To distinguish effectively the true and false information, the team drew on the work of six independent organizations fact-checking.

The false information is, in average, circulated more rapidly and more widely than the real, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

On average, the true information take six times more time than the false to reach 1,500 people, according to their analysis.

The difference is even more marked when it comes to information on the policy, compared to information relating to terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or the economy.

The academics have also discovered that this difference was not the fact of programs, but users.

Thus, while many worry about the spread of “fake news” by “bots” – software programs that perform their own operations on the internet, the study reveals that their spread is mainly a consequence of human action.

This propensity of internet users to spread false information could be explained, according to the study, by the novelty of the “fake news” and their ability to surprise more than the true information.

It appears also that the Twitter accounts which are published false information, on average, have fewer followers, receive less accounts and are less active than those where one “tweets” of real information.

There has been much discussion of the use of “bots” in the investigation conducted by the special prosecutor, u.s. Robert Mueller on the interference in Russian in the electoral process u.s. during the presidential election campaign of 2016.

These programs have been used, according to the survey, to promote the election of the billionaire republican Donald Trump, and to accentuate the polarization of the american population.

At the end of February, Twitter has issued new rules intended to curb the influence of “bots” in the functioning of the social network.