People Older Than 65 Share the Most Fake News, Study Finds (theverge.com) 403
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities. Older users shared more fake news than younger ones regardless of education, sex, race, income, or how many links they shared. In fact, age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic -- including party affiliation. Today's study, published in Science Advances, examined user behavior in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In early 2016, the academics started working with research firm YouGov to assemble a panel of 3,500 people, which included both Facebook users and non-users. On November 16th, just after the election, they asked Facebook users on the panel to install an application that allowed them to share data including public profile fields, religious and political views, posts to their own timelines, and the pages that they followed. Users could opt in or out of sharing individual categories of data, and researchers did not have access to the News Feeds or data about their friends.
About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29). As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29). As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
Changing times (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Print and TV lied about so many things like the Gulf Of Tonkin attack that it's hard to believe anything. New York Times weapons of mass destruction and a lot more.
Re:Changing times (Score:5, Insightful)
True. But the noise-to-signal ratio was still WAY better than what we have today. Old-school news were actually news, later it was replaced with opinion pieces, until today that's pretty much all that's left.
And the old folks are still used to actually getting news when watching news.
Re:Changing times (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly is "the elites"?
Re: (Score:2)
Print and TV lied about so many things like the Gulf Of Tonkin attack that it's hard to believe anything. New York Times weapons of mass destruction and a lot more.
It's not so much that they lied about things like that during the Vietnam War. It's just that their sources, who had up until that point fed them relatively truthful information, stopped doing so, but the media continued to assume that what they were hearing was the truth, and reported it as such. However, as more and more reports from the ground came out and contradicted the official line, things began to change. The country started trusting it's government less and less. A perfect example is the battle
Oh Lord no, (Score:5, Informative)
Our media has served corporate masters for decades, probably centuries.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup, older adults were appalled that the younger kids were so opposed to the Vietnam War, despite there really being no valid reason to be there in the first place. It took a long time before the anti-Vietnam feeling became mainstream. Granted, we still had the draft so there was a vested interest in young people to not head off to war. Whereas in WWII people were enlisting to join the fight because the reasons for the war were more apparent.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Older folk are more set in their ways and are far more likely to accept a story, that they have a built in bias and inclination for. Whether fake or not, is not as important as them wanting to believe it and thus forwarding it, even if they only profess belief without actually believing it. They can be quite stubborn critters and will push a story they want and claim it true even if they know it is false.
Everyone was tricked by progressively more propagandistic corporate main stream media, that lied, misre
Re: Oh Lord no, (Score:3, Insightful)
I pointed out that a picture of a Tweet forwarded by one of my senior friends was fake, and that you could tell it was fake because it had a watermark on it identifying it as having originated at a fake tweet website, and a quick Google search confirmed it. The response? No retraction, no warning not to share it, no delete, no update... Just a comment that said, "Well, it's something she probably would have said." That's when I started giving up on correcting the seniors in my feed. They literally do not ca
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I've been through this with relatives on the same side as me. For example, I'm a conservative, but pale in comparison to my wife's aunt, who is extreme right wing. During the '16 campaign, she was forwarding fake news against HRC, and I would reply all pointing out the error. She finally took to BCCing me on the emails, and I wrote to her saying that her efforts were not helping her cause. When it comes out that you're pushing lies, you generate sympathy for the person lied about instead of your desired
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In other words, mostly people born after WWII or too young to be scarred by it.
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Our media has served corporate masters for decades, probably centuries.
Your citation indicated government masters, not corporate masters. Funny how you provide the citation and then are immediately wrong about its contents.
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That very much hinges on whether you believe them to be separate entities.
I personally do. Separate entities with a symbiotic relationship.
Re: (Score:3)
Only in a communist system, the government controls the economy.
Luckily we're in a capitalist system where everything is exactly the opposite.
Re:Oh Lord no, (Score:5, Insightful)
Chomsky was always fake news, though.
Before we saved Kosova from Serbia, he claimed we were going to build an oil pipeline from Turkey over the mountains(!!!) through former Yugoslavia into western Europe.
Same thing at the start of the war in Afghanistan; he predicted it was all about a pipeline.
He is the "father of linguistic" in the same sense that Freud is the Father of Psychology; he started a field before his theories had to be discarded.
But he was never a reasonable political geographer at all. He only has eyes for oil. He has no sense of perspective, or knowledge of other externalities or sources of corruption. He lies ten times per paragraph.
fake news maxim (Score:2)
Any news article that decries "fake news" is itself fake news.
Re:Changing times (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean "editors", as in people whose job is to maintain standards.
It's fashionable to attack them as being biased, but in practice the imperfect world of editing is preferable to the rivers of bullshit on Facebook etc.
Re: (Score:2)
"Fox News idiot accuses everyone of communism" (Score:2)
"No need for a communist like yourself to be wanting and wishing for state ran media." - are you ironically ignoring the fact that Fox News is essentially Trump's campaign management and advisory board in one?
Literally. https://www.thedailybeast.com/sean-hannity-in-trouble-with-fox-after-participating-in-trump-ad
Re: Changing times (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, you SAY trust no one without your own research. But you almost invariably mean - "Google a bunch until you find a handful of sources that you feel are credible that back up your already-held position." Because until you've done a proper randomized trial, you haven't done your OWN research.
Re: Changing times (Score:4, Insightful)
I find in many cases if youâ(TM)re willing to do a bit of your own math you can check a lot of it. Liars just make up numbers, and not very carefully.
Re: (Score:2)
I find in many cases if youâ(TM)re willing to do a bit of your own math you can check a lot of it. Liars just make up numbers, and not very carefully.
Nine fifths of statistics are made up.
Tweeter (Score:5, Funny)
I know one old man who's been sharing a lot.
Re: (Score:3)
And this assisted living facility don't like nobody on their lawn that ain't playing croquet or having a heart attack playing croquet. So off with ya.
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And yes, I left the blinker on for a reason!
Funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny... (Score:4, Funny)
They did include CNN in the real news set. Hah.
This story is clearly also fake news due to these facts.
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Breitbart is up there leading the fake news charge, at least by outlets that claim to be doing news reporting. Fox, MSNBC, and CNN are pretty straight forward with the news in comparison, and the faults I see with them are more about mixing editorials into the news stories than with making stuff up.
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CNN makes mistakes. Fox is just trying to bullshit you.
Actually these days Fox seems to be trying to beam messages directly into the President's head.
Re:Funny... (Score:5, Interesting)
CNN makes mistakes. Fox is just trying to bullshit you.
Actually these days Fox seems to be trying to beam messages directly into the President's head.
How much time do you spend watching/reading Fox News?
Personally, I've been trying to read them regularly, specifically because I want to understand that side of the coverage, though I still use the NY Times as my primary news source. What I see is that it's not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe. Outside of a handful of opinion commentators who tend to go off the rails on occasion, the factual level of their coverage is pretty good. They often cover things that I'd have thought they would prefer to ignore, and do it fairly. Their headlines tend to have an obvious slant to them -- though not be actually incorrect -- but the articles tend to be accurate.
I mention this only because I think there are lots of left-leaning and moderate people around who have a very inaccurate perception of Fox News, which derives from their own online echo chambers. I think that's just as unhealthy as if Fox really were what so many believe them to be.
Re:Funny... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fox is notorious for ignoring important news stories for political reasons. It's well documented.
Re:Funny... (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/... [vox.com]
First result from a google of "fox news ignoring stories".
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Selectively not covering things is part of the bullshitting.
They only tend to start the favourable coverage when they can't ignore it any more and they want to support their chosen cause. They are hyper-partisan like that.
Wikipedia has extensive info on this, with references. The stuff about the Trump/Russia investigation is a particularly good example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN makes mistakes. Fox is just trying to bullshit you.
Actually these days Fox seems to be trying to beam messages directly into the President's head.
CNN does a bit more than make mistakes, sarin is an odorless, colorless, tasteless chemical used in chemical warfare and yet this CNN reporter huffs a suspected sample [reddit.com]. The kind of person who lacks critical thinking and impulse control and tries to huff death spray usually dosent make it to be a reporter so I'm assuming they knew it was fake all along. Even a non lethal minor exposure to your lungs can easily cause permenant neurological damage.
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I cringe too much when it is on in public places to be unbiased myself, but even when they are stating fact, they appear to editorialize with intonation, facial expression, and posture to push more credibility to the conservative points and less to the liberal points.
With a few commentators gone, they seem to be a little more subtle, but not dramatically different in their policies. Again, this is just 20 minute spots where I am stuck listening to them. Granted they do stand out because their slant is con
Re:"Republican easy-liar blathers, news at 11" (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. You better look at those numbers again. Democrats have had 5-8 point larger share since at least 2004. That's why in every national election since that time the Democratic candidates have gotten a majority of the votes. If it hadn't been for gerrymandering, both houses of Congress would have been in Democratic control for the past 15 years.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1... [gallup.com]
Re:"Republican easy-liar blathers, news at 11" (Score:4, Informative)
Not just gerrymandering. For senate, each state gets 2 senators regardless of population. But I don't mind if the house and senate are from different parties, since that requires them to actually learn to cooperate and compromise to get stuff done.
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Hey guys! Republicans gerrymandered their way into Congress!
*checks map of Illinois 4th Congressional District*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Oh... damn.
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Republican gerrymandering results in Democrat congress representatives, are done to preserve minority community voting influence and are more balanced in population distribution.
From your link. Seems your link justifying Il-4 actually dispels the myth of Republican gerrymandering rather than support it uh....
In attempting to counter my point, you actually supported the notion that Republicans donâ(TM)t cheat. Good job.
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The IL-4 boundaries were drawn by Republicans during Dennis Hastert's lawsuit: "The Court rejected challenges to the Republican map..."
Source: https://www.senate.mn/departme [senate.mn]... [senate.mn]
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You should read the Constitution. Then you'd realize that the Senate has had gerrymandering baked into its definition since day one. The Republicans hold 53 seats after receiving 35 million votes, while the Democrats hold only 45 seats even though they got 53 million votes.
Re: "Republican easy-liar blathers, news at 11" (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, you asked how the Senate could have a Republican majority without sub-state level gerrymandering. When I showed you the math, you flipped into the standard "There's only States! No US population!" mode. Well, why did you ask your goddamned question if you already knew the answer?
However you try to spin it, you cannot deny the simple fact that the party in control of the Senate represents the will of a not-even-close minority of US voters. That outcome is indistinguishable from gerrymandering, intentional or not.
Re: "Republican easy-liar blathers, news at 11" (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't just the same effect as gerrymandering -- it absolutely is gerrymandering. It is gerrymandering in favour of rural populations and against urban populations, rather than geographical gerrymandering, but it is nonetheless a deliberate gaming of the vote.
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How exactly does this mythical gerrymandering affect Senate results... when they are based on state-wide votes?
Most recently in 2018, we saw the Democrats win the body would could be gerrymandered, and lose ground in the one which cannot.
Are you suggesting *gasp* Democrats gerrymandered themselves into power in 2019?
I can handle this one for you...
* The fact that the house maps are gerrymandered is not a consideration when talking about flipping seats since they were also gerrymandered in the previous election.
* The minority party can always be expected to gain ground in the house in the absence of a "wave" (this is coin flipping 101)
* In 2018, 19 blue senate seats and 7 red senate seats were in play, which made it hard to not lose ground there, despite the blue wave.
* In 2020, More red senate seats will be in play
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The solution is obvious now! (Score:4, Funny)
All the young people need to start trolling old people on Facebook until they either quit Facebook or have a heart attack. Problem solved! ;)
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Obligatory: Get of my lawn!
You young punk. LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Or they know spin (Score:2, Insightful)
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Do older people just share more news? Do they share a larger percentage of fake news? Also as you get older you see so many real cases of your government killing a half a million here (Syria) or 4.5 million (Vietnam) that you get to the point that you can believe almost anything. Yes Hillary is a progressive excetera.
Also more likely to believe "published" info (Score:5, Informative)
The big thing that TFA seems to miss is that I find that older people don't tend to understand that basically anybody can put together a professional looking website with articles that seem to be written by journalists. For most of their lives, they've only had three TV networks, major newspapers and other media outlets that have been invested in the copy and its presentation.
It's hard for them NOT to believe stories like "Hillary and Oprah had an affair in the 1970s" when they can find it on http://abcnews.go.corp/ [go.corp] - which is a an actual article I got forwarded from an elderly family member during the 2016 election and we had to explain to her that the URL wasn't actually ABC News even though it had the actual ABC logo which means the story wasn't true.
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anybody can put together a professional looking website with articles that seem to be written by journalists.
... but these old farts also share articles that have obviously not been written by a journalist. Journalists can spell. Journalists can write grammatically and semantically coherent sentences. Journalists don't need google translate to make sense of foreign sources.
middle (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see both the inexperience of youth and the calcification of the opinions of the elderly.
I know very well what the first is like, and sadly can see myself headed straight for the second. There is much wisdom there, but it really does depend on what kind of life you have had. Opinions that took a lifetime to form, very rarely change by themselves. Old people do what they do and so do the young. The troubling thing is that most are addicted to the social network, not that sometimes bad ideas proliferate on it.
I've certainly noticed this (Score:4, Interesting)
I think digital skills are a factor, but I think a bigger factor might be cultural alienation.
Realistically western culture is dominated by white males between 25 and 55, diversity is rising... but that demographic still rules.
Nevertheless this group is becoming a lot more progressive than previous generations of white males, the 65+ group of white males, and that previous group is becoming alienated from modern culture and acting accordingly.
And how do you explain being out of step with modern culture and morality? Well you justify it with a different set of facts, ie, fake news! The fake news isn't there to trick people, it's there to give them an excuse to trick themselves!!
Re: (Score:3)
In Other News (Score:2)
In other news, water is wet.
This really isn't a surprise (Score:3)
Re: This really isn't a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
"there'll come a time when I can't tell a crook from an honest man because my critical thinking facilities are toast."
You voted for Clinton, didn't you? My brother I have some bad news for you...
Re: (Score:3)
You voted for Clinton, didn't you? My brother I have some bad news for you...
You've done nailed it.
The fact is the media is all narrative now, and the authors of this "study" cherry picked some stuff to label fake and non-fake in order to get the "result" aka narrative that they wanted.
Their fake list lacks any MSM, and need it be pointed out that MSM people like Shaun King just got busted yet again for fake news and yet again is unavailable for comment...
I voted for Bernie (Score:3)
Say what you will about Clinton but she's a classic "Goldwater Girl" (look it up). As pure conservative as there every was. And I mean a _real_ conservative. She'd have kept everything the same, resisting change every step along the way. Trump's the radical, it just so happens he's a radical for mega corporations instead of working class Americans.
This study is fake news (Score:2, Informative)
This study is fake news in that the list of "real news"cited is almost entirely opinion pieces from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.
Story Publication
Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one? Washington Post
Stop Pretending You Don't Know Why People Hate Hillary Clinton Huffington Post
Melania Trump’s girl-on-girl photos from racy shoot revealed New York Post
I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hill
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I agree that opinion pieces can be a big problem, especially if not clearly labeled "opinion." Major networks are getting better about including that word in titles, but they're penalized for doing so since most of their competition doesn't and gets more views for skipping it. I prefer most of my news to be objective with minimal bias, but I also appreci
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The point is that they don't general publish outright fabrications. Yes, yes, I'm sure you can find something that turned out to be untrue, those Chinese spy chips come to mind, but for the most part they are not trying to lie to you. Even if you disagree with their opinion pieces.
Your ability to copy/paste is admirable, but you might want to work on the formatting.
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Ford said there will be zero job losses in the U.S. as a result of the new plant in Mexico. The Wayne, Michigan, plant that now builds the Focus and C-Max that will move to Mexico will instead start building other models -- probably the new Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger small pickup.
Ford to Lay Off 2,000 Workers for Ranger, Bronco Retooling [bloomberg.com](March 5, 2018):
Workers at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, west of Detroit, will be temporarily dismissed from around May 7 through Oct. 22, according to a notice Ford filed with the state.
Who knew liberals considered parroting evil corporations' lies to be real news.
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Who knew that a factory set up to build Ford Focus or C-Max would have to be changed to build Broncos and Rangers?
I take it you missed the "temporarily" part?
Or did you really think that machine operators were expected to be able to move their machinery themselves?
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Some will take the buyout offers, some will be 'transferred' and some will be 'temporarily' dismissed (all of them will be rehired after 6 months, I pinky promise, I'm CEO of megacorporation why would I lie?) so 'there will be zero job losses'. Yeah, not buying it. But when the inevitable layoff happens, nobody will care about that article. They'll just blame Trump [dailymail.co.uk].
Too much free time perhaps? (Score:2)
Good thing they're not in charge.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...oh wait.
Hardly (Score:2)
"As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts."
I'm an old fart that age too and I was on the Internet before the worldwide web was invented.
We worked on DOS and with Windows 1.03 and unlike the young whippersnappers, we know that Microsoft Office is not the same thing as Microsoft Windows.
They just share more crap (Score:2)
I'LL BE DELETING FACEBOOK! !! Hi I'm Mark Zuckerberg The Director of facebook. Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, facebook use will cost money If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you. If you do not believe me tomorrow at 6 pm that facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay, this is all by law. This message is to inform all our users, that our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users if you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of Lose all your cont the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts the update will be canceled and you will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages Will go to pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts Send this sms and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user Confirmed ... We finish it for free Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents Forward this message to more than 9 people of your contacts and it will be free of life for you to watch and it will turn green the ball of above do it and you will see.to 9 of you
Pause
-2:44
Unmute
Video Of The Internet added a new video: A WORLD WITHOUT FACEBOOK.
Mark Zuckerberg deletes Facebook???
Video Of The Internet
Endless E-mail Chains (Score:4, Informative)
Making fun, instead of fixing the damn problem. (Score:3)
In looking at the study, there are really only a handful of "news" sources that are the worst offenders of supplying fake news, making this a rather finite problem. Instead of targeting/making fun of the victims in a study, is there a reason they did not focus efforts on eradicating the fucking problem instead?
The solution for Facebook is rather simple, assuming they actually give a shit about the problem in the first place. Every news source who wishes to advertise on Facebook starts out in good standing with a 100 credibility rating. When fake news is reported and verified to be fake, you reduce the sources credibility score. If it falls below a certain threshold, they are banned from Facebook advertising. You can make that a temporary ban initially with repeat offenders getting a more permanent ban.
This problem is not hard. The real problem is convincing Facebook to step away from the money and focus on quality content.
As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts.
When snopes.com has been around since the days of dial-up internet, I find this excuse rather lame. It's not hard to teach someone to use something like Snopes. Perhaps we should start with teaching that young employee hired to validate Facebook articles, preferably before they are made public on the platform. You know, instead of wasting time on No-Shit-Sherlock grade studies that essentially provide the public with a precisely targeted punching bag group of people to make fun of. (and here I thought the anti-bullying mentality was actually popular).
They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.
Kids need to remember this fact. This isn't just "stupid old people who can't use a computer". This will be you in your golden years.
Re: (Score:2)
The solution you suggest hides the problem instead. We already have a problem of gang-trolling and "mis-"reporting real news as 'hate-speech' etc. and have it deleted. Your solution exacerbates this problem.
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The solution you suggest hides the problem instead. We already have a problem of gang-trolling and "mis-"reporting real news as 'hate-speech' etc. and have it deleted. Your solution exacerbates this problem.
Once again, for clarity:
If you care enough to present factual news on your platform, you will do the due diligence and verify and validate news properly and thoroughly, not fall for more "gang-trolling" bullshit peddlers.
And filtering/deleting fake news isn't "hiding the problem". I guarantee you don't feel that way about your email SPAM filter, which operates on the exact same principle. It's a bullshit filter. Don't care if it's manual, automated, or a hybrid of both. When justified, it's certainly be
The American right says Snopes is "fake news" too (Score:3)
When snopes.com has been around since the days of dial-up internet, I find this excuse rather lame. It's not hard to teach someone to use something like Snopes. Perhaps we should start with teaching that young employee hired to validate Facebook articles, preferably before they are made public on the platform. You know, instead of wasting time on No-Shit-Sherlock grade studies that essentially provide the public with a precisely targeted punching bag group of people to make fun of. (and here I thought the anti-bullying mentality was actually popular).
I guess you don't know this, but at least since 2016 (I remember that year because of the US presidential election) American right wingers have been saying that Snopes itself isn't trustworthy and is a liberal front for the Democratic Party whose goal is to knock down conservatives and the Republican Party.
I grew up in a small town where lots of people i went to school with are now very conservative Republicans. I've seen them blast Snopes as being unreliable when someone, usually on the left, usuall
What? This article is fake news! Who shared this!? (Score:3)
study not complete (Score:2)
too bad the study did not include why the fake news was shared. I think the results would surprise the researchers. Just because news was shared does not mean it was believed.
i wouldn't be surprised (Score:2)
if this is fake news.
Distortion is a bigger problem than fake news (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...After overdoses and traffic accidents, suicide is the #3 cause of non-disease death [cdc.gov]. But it's extraordinarily rare to see a news story about a suicide unless it's a celebrity. Which is a real shame because this is probably the most preventable cause of death we have. And if more people knew how common it was, they probably wouldn't feel as alone with their problems to commit suicide.
First off, I agree with your various statements here, but wanted to talk about this specific one to gain another viewpoint. Resource management is a responsibility of every government on the planet, and since we've carved this planet up into countries with borders (a.k.a. "yours" and "mine"), those resources are finite. Failing to create policies that control the population within that country would be a failure of resource management. This is why a product as deadly as tobacco is legal in the US. It cr
Did Relotius' story about Fergus Falls ... (Score:2)
... also make it into the "fake news" list?
https://medium.com/@micheleand... [medium.com]
Just asking because the linked list of "fake news" is not "fake news" in general, but "fake news in support of Trump", while the "Real story"s are mostly pro Hillary opinion pieces. The problem then is, that the "fake" vs. "true" contrast in the selection is also a "Trump" vs. "Hillary" contrast, i.e. you can't distinguish if you select for "fake news believers" or for "trump supporters". In proper research you'd want to distinguish
Easier marks (Score:2)
Cognitive decline does happen, but I think they're not being very objective here.
As adults in our prime, the world marches to our drum beat. We don't necessarily agree with all that happens, but we're pretty involved in it happening and see what is going on, allowing us to gauge the news fairly objectively. The older we get, the more the drumbeat of civilization begins to march to the beat of those younger than us, at some point our children. We don't understand anymore, and we often don't like the change,
the elderly will also do whatever the post tells.. (Score:4, Interesting)
the elderly will also do whatever the post tells them to do.
it's a trust thing. because some older associate of them did the same. if it includes something like "a friend lawyer told me to copy paste this" to make some authority. but it's not a friend lawyer of the guy who copy pasted it, but the other elderly seeing that text will think it is, thus it has to be legit because here's this straight up guy they have known 30 years posting that his lawyer told him to share this.
and they will not google/research/apply critical thinking at all. just get outraged and copypaste the thing.
like a typical elderly share includes a "copy to your wall, do not use share".. so it's not the same original fake story, it's copypasted text of the original so it's not so easy for fb to mark them as fake news either with a link to the claimed source explaining how channel 13 never ran this story and how it's all a hoax.
like the "copy this to your wall or facebook will publish all your private data due to privacy change!" thing has been making rounds _again_ just this week.
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This is an easy one to solve.
Dear Facebook, Cut down on fake news. Turn off sharing for the elderly.
Your citizen, Anonymous Coward (Not older than 65)
Better still, suspend voting rights once the first Social Security check arrives.
Completely kidding here. My first check will be arriving soon.
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The problem is rather complex.
A natural aspect of Ageing, is that people feel more comfortable around similar people, and become more distrustful of the others. As when our biology gets past the finding a mate with good genes, to having and raising children. We get to a point on Human lives were they are protective of their clans, and normally try to keep unity within it. So from ages 0-13 Learn about culture, 14-25 find a mate, 26-60 have children and raise them to adulthood, 60+ teach culture, and lessons
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It kind of makes sense, I guess... many elderly people come from an era where Dan Rather or Peter Jennings read them the days news on TV every night and it was treated like gospel and rarely questioned.
Re: Or they do not care about their jobs... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps "fake news" is any news article that's likely to displease inbred twits from the boss class?
Re: Or they do not care about their jobs... (Score:2, Funny)
Vox, Gawker, AND politico!?
I'm sold! How could it NOT be real?!
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The other alternative is that they truly do not care about job security.
I think there are many factors, including simply having more time and not as much to spend it on - hanging out with the remaining friends and family on Facebook and sharing fairly indiscriminately as a way of "keeping in touch" might be more prevalent.
And probably growing up at a time when news came from newspapers which had actual journalists that verified the news, and a desk with editors that approved publishing. Post-Murdoch, news just isn't what it was.
The other tidbit, that republicans are far more li
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This is your daily reminder that a corrected error does not make something fake news, fake news is a deliberate lie.
Re:NYT Readership (Score:5, Insightful)
This is your daily reminder that a "page 10" correction to the previous day's "Front page bombshell" is one of the many issues of the "Fake news" paradigm.
When the initial story gets widespread dissemination and the correction is all but ignored because it's no longer "News of the day", then the initial story is what people remember, and often quote later even after a correction has been issued.
Fake news is not just deliberate lies. It's many things. You'll be quite surprised to know that Fake news can also be rooted 100% in truth, if you simply omit key facts or context that are unfavorable to the narrative you're attempting to spin.
Re:NYT Readership (Score:4, Insightful)
And here we see part of the problem. No, bad reporting is not part of fake news. Is the corrections being downplayed a problem? Yes, absolutely. Are they part of the fake news problem? No. There is a world of difference between someone making a mistake and someone intentionally writing false information in an article. Sure, mistakes are a problem. Yes, biased reporting is a problem. But they are not a part of fake news or even on par with it. Part of the issue is that posts like this cause people to distrust the public media, so they see no difference between someone's blog and the mainstream media because "it's all the same". Bias and mistakes are not the same as fake news.
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Is 65 the avg age of the NYT's readership?
That immediately occurred to me.
It's actually the older crowd that tends to think that CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT et al are just the gospel.
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They made their excellent profits and moved on. And now that organizations care more about fact checking, those sites have been banned from most social media sites for having too many blatantly false stories. Spreading obvious lies for clicks doesn't pay as well as it used to on those platforms.
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Because the story is like 5 hours old? When was the last time you read anything on /. that wasn't at least a day or two old?