Research shows that the speed at which fake news spreads on Twitter is indistinguishable from true news

In recent years, fake news is said to have influenced the US presidential election, and Twitter and Facebook are said to be helping. Regarding the 2018 research result on fake news on Twitter that 'wrong information is more likely to be spread than true information', a new 'mechanism for spreading fake news and true news is indistinguishable' It's so similar, 'the research result was announced.

Comparing information diffusion mechanisms by matching on cascade size | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/46/e2100786118

Viral news – true and untrue – moves equally through Twitter | Cornell Chronicle
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/11/viral-news-true-and-untrue-moves-equally-through-twitter

Fake news has existed in newspapers for a long time, but in recent years, the spread of the Internet has made it easier to create and spread fake news, and as a result, we are in an era where 'everyone can loosen public opinion with fake news.' ..

In 2018, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research team investigated more than 125,000 stories that were retweeted more than 4.5 million times on Twitter over the 11 years from 2006 to 2017. , Announced research results that found that 'wrong information is more likely to be tweeted and disseminated than true information.'

The results of this research are explained in detail in the following articles.

It turns out that it is not Twitter bots but ordinary people who spread fake news --GIGAZINE

Since 2020, Twitter has introduced a system that labels tweets that seem to be fake news, but the results are not good. In this regard, Jonas L. Juul of Cornell University and Johan Ugander of Stanford University conducted research focusing on the structure of a 'cascade' consisting of a specific tweet and a retweet for it.

Cascade refers to the structure created by the reach, depth, width, propagation speed, etc. of retweets, and Juul et al. Thought that 'true information and incorrect information can be judged from the cascade.' However, when Juul et al. Compared the cascades produced by the true and incorrect information, they found that the two cascades were indistinguishably similar.

A 2018 MIT study found that 'wrong information spreads much faster, deeper, and more widely,' but the results of this study show that cascades of the same size have the same speed. Suggests. From this, Juul et al. Have taken measures from the viewpoint that SNS such as Twitter 'suppresses the spread of fake news', but pointed out that it is difficult to algorithmically distinguish between true information and incorrect information. He said existing interventions would have limited effectiveness.

The fact that the 2018 study showed that 'people tend to share wrong information rather than true information' is also true in this study, and Juul et al. Based on this result, user's digital literacy It claims that improving fake news is effective in suppressing fake news.