Indeed, Brian, now is the time. Jeff Orlowski, director of that ‘must-see’ social media documentary, The Social Dilemma recently said (CNN 10 Jan 2021):
“Lies spread six times faster on Twitter than the truth (this is research coming out of MIT).” He went on to say: (therefore [ed.] “The truth cannot keep up in a system that that profits off of misinformation.” What he said about facebook fueling radicalisation was far worse. Can anyone suggest any immediate solutions?

‘negative stories will always be prioritised by algorithms, as they are shared more frequently than positive stories’

+ ICO: ‘We have uncovered a disturbing disregard for voters’ personal privacy. Social media platforms, political parties, data brokers and credit reference agencies have started to question their own processes’

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf

Hi Paul,

I certainly can, the link in question is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6In7UtyXY

For a bit of context they used Reddit as a platform to spread this, Reddit is different type of social media site than Facebook in that everyone is anonymous and content shown in the news feeds is decided by what’s been upvoted by the readers (everyone gets a sin gle upvote or downvote per post) Reddit is so large that if something gains traction there you can bet that a lot of other sites will showcase news sourcing Reddit. In this case the article is harmless and a bit of fun, but it really shows how easy it is to game the system and influence what people digest.

Nice one Michael. Can you recall the celebrity burrito clip or link?
Incidentally, Message Source’s effect on message credibility and message like-ability were once good solid academic theoretic building blocks for many comms courses and now they are back with more relevance than ever.

On a lighter note, I watched a video put together by a few guys who wanted to show how easy it is to generate lies at make them go viral and bamboozle the masses, it was over something quite silly (a “celebrity” eating a burrito sideways, they hired someone who looked similar) but hundreds of thousands of people fell for it because once it started to gain traction, no one questioned it due to so many people going along with it, it’s like a tidal wave that pulls everyone in. Quite scary when it’s used to manipulate something as important as Brexit, it won’t be the last time we see this happen either.