‘Lies spread faster than the truth,’ says major fake news study

First word

FAKE news is on the front page again in the world’s biggest capitals. Science magazine, in its issue of March 9, 2018, has published study by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers of social media and fake news.

Entitled “The Spread of True and False News Online,” the study runs for 11 pages and consists of 4,882 words. Its three authors are: Soroush Vosoughi1, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral, evidently Asians, or Asian-Americans, from the sound of their names.

The conclusions of the study are stunning and will dismay my colleagues here at TheManila

Times, because we strive every day to bring to our readers and

the nation a fair picture of the truth of events and developments.

“Lies spread faster than the almost always beat out the truth on and deeper into the social network than accurate information.

Need for a news ecosystem

to the Science study.

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common - much faster than accurate stories.

“It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information - entist at MIT who has studied fake study. “And that is not just because of bots. It might have something

The study has already prompted alarm from social scientists. “We must redesign our information ecosystem

Science entitled: “The science of fake this essay.) The social scientists call for a new drive of interdisciplinary research “to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying

“How can we create a news ecosystem ... that values and

The new study suggests that it will not be easy. Though Vosoughi and his colleagues only focus on Twitter—the study was conducted using exclusive data that the company made available to MIT—their work has implications major social network. Any platform provocative content runs the risk of amplifying fake news along with it.

Though the study is written in the a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject— entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best.

Poe-Roque melodrama

I wish I had already read the Science when I stumbled yesterday on the exchange between Sen. Grace Poe and presidential spokesman Harry Roque on the subject of fake news and Poe’s ideas on how to stop it.

I would have passed on to their pronouncements on fake news would have been more informed and informative.

Roque has melodramatically announced that he will resign his Palace post if Congress passes the anti-fake news bill authored by Poe. He said freedom of expression and of the press

from my post and I will sue before the Supreme Court to challenge its

- accuracy and truthfulness accorded by

law can “be unconstitutional because

Expect him to talk some more about this. He looks really serious about running for the Senate next year.

Fake news vs false news

their study. They prefer to use the

They wrote: “In our current political climate and in the academic interventions in US politics through - ate to think of fake news as referring believe that this phrase has been irredeemably polarized in our current political and media climate.

“As politicians have implemented a political strategy of labeling news sources that do not support their whereas sources that support their po the term has lost all connection to the actual veracity of the information have therefore explicitly avoided the term fake news throughout this paper and instead use the more objectively Although the terms fake news and misinformation also imply a willful make any claims about the intent of the purveyors of the information in our analyses. We instead focus our attention on veracity and stories that

Media organizations likethe Times would be wise to take the cue from gained notoriety mainly by piggybacking on the prestige and reliability of mainstream news media. They have taken liberties with accuracy in what their anonymity as journalists. They do not employ the system of editing and fact-checking that are de rigueur in the editing and publication of reports.