Researchers find fake news reaches users up to 20 times faster than factual content – and real users are more likely to spread it than bots“Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,” wrote Jonathan Swift in 1710. Now a group of scientists say they have found evidence Swift was right – at least when it comes to Twitter. “Whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1,000 people, the top 1% of false-news cascades routinely diffused to between 1,000 and 100,000 people,” they write. The researchers speculate that falsehoods spread so fast because they fulfil our desire for novelty. Focusing just on reliable news organisations might help users avoid sharing fake rumours – if there were any agreement on which news organisations they were.

Source: The Guardian March 08, 2018 18:56 UTC