Misinformation "Superspreaders"

[Waterglass]

[K218b]

Yup!  Interesting research into misinformation propagation has led to a single culprit...

Reviewing posting activity on X (formerly Twitter) researchers found these villains' who while accounting for only 0.3% of users, were responsible for spreading 80% of the links to "fake news sites."

Who are these horrible people?... "Older women."

From ArsTechnica: Key misinformation “superspreaders” on Twitter: Older women
 

---

Misinformation is not a new problem, but there are plenty of indications that the advent of social media has made things worse. Academic researchers have responded by trying to understand the scope of the problem, identifying the most misinformation-filled social media networks, organized government efforts to spread false information, and even prominent individuals who are the sources of misinformation.

All of that's potentially valuable data. But it skips over another major contribution: average individuals who, for one reason or another, seem inspired to spread misinformation. A study released today looks at a large panel of Twitter accounts that are associated with US-based voters (the work was done back when X was still Twitter). It identifies a small group of misinformation superspreaders, which represent just 0.3 percent of the accounts but are responsible for sharing 80 percent of the links to fake news sites.

---

Needless to say, there are still many questions to be answered on how they determine what exactly is a "Fake News Site," because ever since COVID the designation has become the stereotypical trope of 'establishment support' journalism.  But nevertheless, the assertion in the title of the article leaves little room for doubt.  Furthermore, Twitter (X) does not represent the entire world of internet users.

I thought folks here might have some interest more mainstream characterization of the internet... and those who use it for sharing information of which they don't approve.
 

---

The work, done by Sahar Baribi-Bartov, Briony Swire-Thompson, and Nir Grinberg, relies on a panel of over 650,000 Twitter accounts that have been associated with voting registrations in the US, using full names and location information. Those voting records, in turn, provide information about the individuals, as well as location information that can be associated with the average demographics of that voting district. All of these users were active on the platform in the lead-up to the 2020 elections, although the study stopped before the post-election surge in misinformation.

---

Sigh - I have reservations about all this, their conclusions, and several things common to 'fake news site' they fail to address... but I'd expect you don't need me to point them out... except... a small hint... the "targeted marketing' experiences of undiscriminating users.

Well, enjoy the read.

There are definitely paid shills online and on many social platforms who are doing a job of spreading misinformation. Take for example the wars in Ukraine and Gaza

[FlyersFan]

There are definitely paid shills online and on many social platforms who are doing a job of spreading misinformation. Take for example the wars in Ukraine and Gaza

And then there are those useful idiots who shill for free .. like the ones who spend all day and half the night, to spread the same easily debunked Hamas propaganda day after day, spamming the boards with it.  Poor indoctrinated shills ...

---

ATS is / was loaded with old women pushing disinformation ...

How do you know when a poster is old or is a woman?  
Unless the poster specifically tells you .. you don't know.
And even then, you don't know if they are telling the truth.
I have seen plenty of shilling and indoctrinated posts coming
from men and from 'younger' posters.  It's not an old lady thing.
It's an everyone thing.

[K218b]

And then there are those useful idiots who shill for free .. like the ones who spend all day and half the night, to spread the same easily debunked Hamas propaganda day after day, spamming the boards with it.  Poor indoctrinated shills ...

---

How do you know when a poster is old or is a woman?  
Unless the poster specifically tells you .. you don't know.
And even then, you don't know if they are telling the truth.
I have seen plenty of shilling and indoctrinated posts coming
from men and from 'younger' posters.  It's not an old lady thing.
It's an everyone thing.

If you blindly support Israel then everything else that deviates from this blind support is seen as Hamas propaganda. So I understand perfectly your position if you are an Israeli supporter.

---

And then there are those useful idiots who shill for free .. like the ones who spend all day and half the night, to spread the same easily debunked Hamas propaganda day after day, spamming the boards with it.  Poor indoctrinated shills ...

---

How do you know when a poster is old or is a woman?  
Unless the poster specifically tells you .. you don't know.
And even then, you don't know if they are telling the truth.
I have seen plenty of shilling and indoctrinated posts coming
from men and from 'younger' posters.  It's not an old lady thing.
It's an everyone thing.

Also what Waterglass said would be true. It has a good chance.

---

[REMOVED]

There is plenty of misinformation online and in all platforms, not just ATS. There are many paid shills and you can easily spot them after sometime engaging with them. There are also people with strong personal convictions who cannot deviate from their dogma and argue until the end of times no matter the evidence presented.

For the rest of your post I say you.made me laugh.as what you said has been discussed extensively outside the ATS realm. It's coming from all directions as far as I know.

[ArMaP]

Can't even say I'm surprised.

Just my own experience has been well intentioned older women sharing, linking,tweeting absolute nonsense as if it was legitimate news. Everything from flat earth, Med-beds,images of weather radar bursts labeled "secret govt weapon!" Q, pizza-gate, the list never ends.

My experience tells me the same.

Although I don't have many people on my Facebook friends list, I have had to correct one of them, an older woman in her 70s, tow or three times, because she shares things that are not true.

Another case I know is my boss, also a woman in her 70s, that believes and shares many things she sees on Tik Tok. Some times she tells me about those things and I have to show her that she is following wrong or false information.

Luckily, both are intelligent enough not to keep on posting the same things, but they fall again and again in those traps.

I think one of the reasons older women are such spreaders of disinformation is because they probably have large numbers of connections to other people with large numbers of connections, so just half a dozen people can spread something to a some hundreds or even a few thousands of people.

Edited to add that, from a political point of view, one the above mentioned women is from the left (as we see it in Portugal, not the definition of "left" they use in the US), the other I do not know.

---

Needless to say, there are still many questions to be answered on how they determine what exactly is a "Fake News Site," because ever since COVID the designation has become the stereotypical trope of 'establishment support' journalism. 

They say it on the research:

Similar to prior work (4, 6), we rely on a source-level definition of fake news as domains that portray as legitimate news outlets but do not have the “editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information” (17). We rely on the manually labeled list of fake news sites by Grinberg et al. (4), updated using NewsGuard ratings, and demonstrate the robustness of the findings to different operationalizations (see supplementary materials, section S3). To focus on political news, we restrict the analysis to tweets with external links that were identified as political by a machine learning classifier that we trained and validated against human coders.

[FlyersFan]

There are also people with strong personal convictions who cannot deviate from their dogma and argue until the end of times no matter the evidence presented.

For the rest of your post I say you.made me laugh.....

Pot meet kettle. 

Like I said .... easily debunked propaganda.   My statement stands.

And yeah ...  your post made me laugh too.  Pfffft.

[Maxmars]

[REMOVED]

Wow!  Why didn't you just simply post that you hate ATS?

ATS was "loaded" with all sorts of people; men, women, young, old, many different 'categories.'
You do know that people can disagree with your UFO stories, or reject what you consider evidence, and NOT be "spinsters" or thought police, right?  

While I have no particular love for "ATS ownership" the whole "hiring ****s" and agenda comment comes off as if you've got a personal "hurt" manifesting here.  

I was a moderator on ATS too... are you accusing me of an "agenda" as well?  Do you imagine I "went to meetings" to discuss "plans" or get direction on how to squelch the speech of the members? (PS... no one "hired" me.)

Or are you thinking it was all about you?

---

They say it on the research:

Similar to prior work (4, 6), we rely on a source-level definition of fake news as domains that portray as legitimate news outlets but do not have the “editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information” (17). We rely on the manually labeled list of fake news sites by Grinberg et al. (4), updated using NewsGuard ratings, and demonstrate the robustness of the findings to different operationalizations (see supplementary materials, section S3). To focus on political news, we restrict the analysis to tweets with external links that were identified as political by a machine learning classifier that we trained and validated against human coders.

Thank you for teasing that out of the source material. 

They have a "manually labelled list" ... the fact that a source is on that list means "it's fake."  Doesn't that sound familiar?  

The fact that "NewsGuard" is being cited as authority makes it less reliable, not more.  Even marginally informed people like myself have read articles and or made threads about the "Newsguard" private enterprise and who uses it - and for what.

I offer an idea: 

Profiteering, monetized, and unscroupulous operators can algortihmically assess the 'frame of mind' of any user by mathematically analyzing what they read online, what they post, and who they are linked to.  The readily available "personal' information like voter roles, DMV data, "third-party data' all can be used to identify those 'users' most inclined and prone to react and share a certain kind of "editorialization."

We've all seen the "way" (particularly in monetized content) "media titles" and "content characterizations" of videos and articles are expressed to snag a user into clicking, or sharing.  Article which flatly state things like "Scientists are hiding this,..." or "They are destroying our country!," or "Don't let them get away with this!," "They don't want us to know...!," and even "Share this before they remove it!"

Who is most likely to respond to that?  Perhaps someone who is alarmed, who's opinion has been 'cultivated' by repeated and focused targetting via "algorithm."  

Just a foolishly outlandish idea, I guess.

[K218b]

Pot meet kettle. 

Like I said .... easily debunked propaganda.   My statement stands.

And yeah ...  your post made me laugh too.  Pfffft.

Your statement is personal opinion.
If you believe that every piece of news is misleading Hamas propaganda then you are falling into the same trap as religious people who believe their dogma is the unquestionable truth and only truth that exists.

[TSK]

This a friendly reminder to everyone to keep this discussion civil and free of personal attacks. Failure to comply with this simple request will result in the closing of this thread.

[jaded]

My experience tells me the same.

Although I don't have many people on my Facebook friends list, I have had to correct one of them, an older woman in her 70s, tow or three times, because she shares things that are not true.

Another case I know is my boss, also a woman in her 70s, that believes and shares many things she sees on Tik Tok. Some times she tells me about those things and I have to show her that she is following wrong or false information.

Luckily, both are intelligent enough not to keep on posting the same things, but they fall again and again in those traps.

I think one of the reasons older women are such spreaders of disinformation is because they probably have large numbers of connections to other people with large numbers of connections, so just half a dozen people can spread something to a some hundreds or even a few thousands of people.

Edited to add that, from a political point of view, one the above mentioned women is from the left (as we see it in Portugal, not the definition of "left" they use in the US), the other I do not know.

---

They say it on the research:

Yep agreed!
Fortunately one of my friends before going "share crazy" does ask me to vett seeming crazy "bits". Not that despite me proving something is clickbait they'll change their mind.
(banging head on keyboard) But they won't after that re-post it. 

I have given up (mostly) people don't actually care they're convincing the world they're too stupid to live everytime they repeat nonsense. Being "right" isn't as important as not having that stroke. I guess? Maybe? 

OH! Misinformation does have a purpose. When your Doc checks your blood pressure ask them to explain why the earth is flat, or why we live in a simulation. It absolutely blows their mind you figured out how to do your own "stress test" in 5 seconds or less. 
  ​​​​​​​