An interesting quote on demographics and a potential solution
An interesting quote on demographics and a potential solution
The researchers found that these links were shared over 41 million times, without being clicked. Of these, 76.94% came from conservative users and 14.25% from liberal users. The researchers explained that the vast majority—up to 82%—of the links to false information in the dataset originated from conservative news domains.
To cut down on sharing without clicking, Sundar said that social media platforms could introduce "friction" to slow the share, such as requiring people to acknowledge that they have read the full content prior to sharing.
That conservative/liberal split seems like bait enough to almost make me think it's a possible "gotcha" from the researchers proving their point about people not reading the datasets and just...
That conservative/liberal split seems like bait enough to almost make me think it's a possible "gotcha" from the researchers proving their point about people not reading the datasets and just going off headlines. All you have to do is spend some time on /r/science or /r/politics and you can see this behavior isn't unique to conservatives.
While the data were (was?) limited to Facebook...
And there it is. Completely worthless to draw demographic conclusions based on a dataset of a website that is pretty much exclusively used by old people now. Ironically this is exactly the type of bias-confirming smug headline I would imagine seeing on /r/science, and maybe it's already there.
Also I really don't know if Facebook is even a representative dataset for other online platforms like the phys.org article implies. That's like surveying exclusively redditors and coming to the conclusion that most people who use the internet are white tech nerds who love marvel and are afraid of women
While I generally agree with your conclusions, I don't think the following conclusion you make is really applicable here- Reddit is much smaller in scale and touches way less total demographics...
While I generally agree with your conclusions, I don't think the following conclusion you make is really applicable here-
That's like surveying exclusively redditors and coming to the conclusion that most people who use the internet are white tech nerds who love marvel and are afraid of women
Reddit is much smaller in scale and touches way less total demographics than Facebook does. You're right that it's an isolated ecosystem and it should have been called out by the people who wrote the article (this is addressed in the Nature article). But even with that taken into consideration, I think it's an incredibly important finding when we think about mis/disinformation and how it proliferates on some of these platforms and which audiences it reaches.
This is why I included the second half of what I quoted. Thinking in the lens of population health, or an educated populace, it's important to examine how people are interacting socially in their lives. Facebook touches a huge number of lives and small changes to how it work could have a large effect size. But even ignoring how it could shape potential regulation on a gigantic platform like Facebook, it also opens the door for research to see if this holds true on other social media platforms. It may be a repeated pattern - more research is needed to better understand this.
Isn't reddit only barely behind Facebook on most visited sites in the country? I'd honestly be more surprised if Facebook had a more diverse user base than reddit at this point; at least on the...
Isn't reddit only barely behind Facebook on most visited sites in the country? I'd honestly be more surprised if Facebook had a more diverse user base than reddit at this point; at least on the level of the US. I was mostly just making a joke to dig at redditors (salty ex-reddit mod behavior) but it kinda rings true, at least in my limited experience.
If it helps I really do agree with the point of the article, and I'm not innocent of reading a headline and stopping there either. I just always wrinkle my brow a little when I see the "new study shows conservatives actually more likely to be dumbass idiot stinky doodoo brains" headlines on Reddit all the time because 9 times out of 10 it's drawing a flawed conclusion from a limited dataset. Smug condescension is not a good look no matter how morally correct you may be. (Yes I'm aware I was being smug and condescending, I swear it's mostly ironic)
Some quick googling- Reddit: Facebook: In terms of overall size, facebook is approximately 2 orders of magnitude larger in the world. In terms of the US the numbers look a bit different, but check...
Isn't reddit only barely behind Facebook on most visited sites in the country?
Some quick googling-
Reddit:
According to company-published data, Reddit has 73.1 million daily active unique visitors worldwide as of Q4 2023. 1
Facebook:
Facebook currently has 2.11 billion daily active users (DAUs) on average 2
In terms of overall size, facebook is approximately 2 orders of magnitude larger in the world. In terms of the US the numbers look a bit different, but check the links for more in-depth info about usage patterns and demographics.
Of particular note, Reddit and X both skew heavily male, whereas most other social media websites skew slightly female (RIP in antiquated binary sexism).
I just always wrinkle my brow a little when I see the "new study shows conservatives actually more likely to be dumbass idiot stinky doodoo brains" headlines
Smug condescension is not a good look no matter how morally correct you may be.
Completely agreed, and apologies if it came off that way. I probably should have spent more time prefacing the small quote I pulled out of the article to try and get folks engaged and talking about the subject.
I vaguely remember seeing a UI like that somewhere, when I got tripped up by an edge case: sometimes I see an article in multiple places, so it might look like I'm resharing without reading to a...
I vaguely remember seeing a UI like that somewhere, when I got tripped up by an edge case: sometimes I see an article in multiple places, so it might look like I'm resharing without reading to a system that doesn't have logs of all my online activity.
I'm a big believer in quoting or summarizing articles to make headlines less important, and would like to see it for video, too. Consider it like having an alt text for an image.
Unfortunately, systems don't do it automatically due to copyright concerns. (But they will waste space with a mostly-useless image instead.)
It's a bit tangential, but I wish the article went into more depth on the possible theories of why this happens. I wonder if there's a lib/conservative split on how people discuss issues. Are the...
It's a bit tangential, but I wish the article went into more depth on the possible theories of why this happens. I wonder if there's a lib/conservative split on how people discuss issues. Are the conservatives less interested in the article itself and more interested in a platform to have a discussion on the topic which the article is addressing? Are liberals less likely to click into content if it shares the beliefs they already have? Or are there other root causes? For example, one subgroup might be privacy oriented individuals who may shy away from clicking on certain websites or all links simply because they're gonna be bombarded with privacy notices and cookies and may not be browsing from a device with javascript or other blocking.
I don't really know, but I think this poses some interesting questions to be considered when folks don't bother to RTFA and whether it's possible or even desirable to nudge folks to click through and read it.
Yay! My gut take here is that headlines are made to be as polarizing as possible; either you attract readership from those who like and agree with the message, or you get clicks (let’s be real,...
Congratulations. Reading this far into the story is a feat
Yay!
So why do people share without clicking in the first place?
"The reason this happens may be because people are just bombarded with information and are not stopping to think through it," Sundar said.
My gut take here is that headlines are made to be as polarizing as possible; either you attract readership from those who like and agree with the message, or you get clicks (let’s be real, this isn’t about print) from those who strongly oppose the sentiment. Either way, you’re not helping your traffic if your headlines are already more nuanced. At most, that’s stuff for further along in the article… So perhaps the lesson here is that a good newspaper tries to present facts and lets readers come to their own conclusions by only gently nudging them towards the correct direction, not shoving opinions in their face upfront and then presenting facts (if at all)?
"In such an environment, misinformation has more of a chance of going viral. Hopefully, people will learn from our study and become more media literate, digitally savvy and, ultimately, more aware of what they are sharing."
At least to me as someone who doesn’t have any of the big “traditional” social media presences (and the issues coming with them) anymore, I’m glad this isn’t an issue in my day-to-day life. I’m overwhelmed by enough things as-is, I can’t imagine having a constantly-refreshed news feed that I don’t have control over in my go-to app/website.
Unfortunately, this study will not change media literacy remaining a scarce commodity, either.
I read this article. Proof. Will that have any effect at all? I've seen shared posts from people proud to have spent time in "Facebook Jail" for sharing what the platform considers misinformation...
"If platforms implement a warning that the content might be false and make users acknowledge the danger in doing so, that might help people think before sharing."
Will that have any effect at all? I've seen shared posts from people proud to have spent time in "Facebook Jail" for sharing what the platform considers misinformation but the user considers the truth.
To cut down on sharing without clicking, Sundar said that social media platforms could introduce "friction" to slow the share, such as requiring people to acknowledge that they have read the full content prior to sharing.
Like a checkbox that has to be ticked before the share button can be clicked? I think this would work slightly better. Maybe we can get the amount of links shared without reading down from 75% to 70%.
It's been a while since I shilled my favourite social media site! Readup takes it a step further, using a browser extension to make sure you actually read (or at the very least scrolled slowly through) the article before you're allowed to share it or comment on it.
An interesting quote on demographics and a potential solution
That conservative/liberal split seems like bait enough to almost make me think it's a possible "gotcha" from the researchers proving their point about people not reading the datasets and just going off headlines. All you have to do is spend some time on /r/science or /r/politics and you can see this behavior isn't unique to conservatives.
And there it is. Completely worthless to draw demographic conclusions based on a dataset of a website that is pretty much exclusively used by old people now. Ironically this is exactly the type of bias-confirming smug headline I would imagine seeing on /r/science, and maybe it's already there.
Also I really don't know if Facebook is even a representative dataset for other online platforms like the phys.org article implies. That's like surveying exclusively redditors and coming to the conclusion that most people who use the internet are white tech nerds who love marvel and are afraid of women
While I generally agree with your conclusions, I don't think the following conclusion you make is really applicable here-
Reddit is much smaller in scale and touches way less total demographics than Facebook does. You're right that it's an isolated ecosystem and it should have been called out by the people who wrote the article (this is addressed in the Nature article). But even with that taken into consideration, I think it's an incredibly important finding when we think about mis/disinformation and how it proliferates on some of these platforms and which audiences it reaches.
This is why I included the second half of what I quoted. Thinking in the lens of population health, or an educated populace, it's important to examine how people are interacting socially in their lives. Facebook touches a huge number of lives and small changes to how it work could have a large effect size. But even ignoring how it could shape potential regulation on a gigantic platform like Facebook, it also opens the door for research to see if this holds true on other social media platforms. It may be a repeated pattern - more research is needed to better understand this.
Isn't reddit only barely behind Facebook on most visited sites in the country? I'd honestly be more surprised if Facebook had a more diverse user base than reddit at this point; at least on the level of the US. I was mostly just making a joke to dig at redditors (salty ex-reddit mod behavior) but it kinda rings true, at least in my limited experience.
If it helps I really do agree with the point of the article, and I'm not innocent of reading a headline and stopping there either. I just always wrinkle my brow a little when I see the "new study shows conservatives actually more likely to be dumbass idiot stinky doodoo brains" headlines on Reddit all the time because 9 times out of 10 it's drawing a flawed conclusion from a limited dataset. Smug condescension is not a good look no matter how morally correct you may be. (Yes I'm aware I was being smug and condescending, I swear it's mostly ironic)
Some quick googling-
Reddit:
Facebook:
In terms of overall size, facebook is approximately 2 orders of magnitude larger in the world. In terms of the US the numbers look a bit different, but check the links for more in-depth info about usage patterns and demographics.
Of particular note, Reddit and X both skew heavily male, whereas most other social media websites skew slightly female (RIP in antiquated binary sexism).
Completely agreed, and apologies if it came off that way. I probably should have spent more time prefacing the small quote I pulled out of the article to try and get folks engaged and talking about the subject.
Define "old people".
I vaguely remember seeing a UI like that somewhere, when I got tripped up by an edge case: sometimes I see an article in multiple places, so it might look like I'm resharing without reading to a system that doesn't have logs of all my online activity.
I'm a big believer in quoting or summarizing articles to make headlines less important, and would like to see it for video, too. Consider it like having an alt text for an image.
Unfortunately, systems don't do it automatically due to copyright concerns. (But they will waste space with a mostly-useless image instead.)
It's a bit tangential, but I wish the article went into more depth on the possible theories of why this happens. I wonder if there's a lib/conservative split on how people discuss issues. Are the conservatives less interested in the article itself and more interested in a platform to have a discussion on the topic which the article is addressing? Are liberals less likely to click into content if it shares the beliefs they already have? Or are there other root causes? For example, one subgroup might be privacy oriented individuals who may shy away from clicking on certain websites or all links simply because they're gonna be bombarded with privacy notices and cookies and may not be browsing from a device with javascript or other blocking.
I don't really know, but I think this poses some interesting questions to be considered when folks don't bother to RTFA and whether it's possible or even desirable to nudge folks to click through and read it.
Direct link to nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02067-4
Yay!
My gut take here is that headlines are made to be as polarizing as possible; either you attract readership from those who like and agree with the message, or you get clicks (let’s be real, this isn’t about print) from those who strongly oppose the sentiment. Either way, you’re not helping your traffic if your headlines are already more nuanced. At most, that’s stuff for further along in the article… So perhaps the lesson here is that a good newspaper tries to present facts and lets readers come to their own conclusions by only gently nudging them towards the correct direction, not shoving opinions in their face upfront and then presenting facts (if at all)?
At least to me as someone who doesn’t have any of the big “traditional” social media presences (and the issues coming with them) anymore, I’m glad this isn’t an issue in my day-to-day life. I’m overwhelmed by enough things as-is, I can’t imagine having a constantly-refreshed news feed that I don’t have control over in my go-to app/website.
Unfortunately, this study will not change media literacy remaining a scarce commodity, either.
I read this article. Proof.
Will that have any effect at all? I've seen shared posts from people proud to have spent time in "Facebook Jail" for sharing what the platform considers misinformation but the user considers the truth.
Like a checkbox that has to be ticked before the share button can be clicked? I think this would work slightly better. Maybe we can get the amount of links shared without reading down from 75% to 70%.
It's been a while since I shilled my favourite social media site! Readup takes it a step further, using a browser extension to make sure you actually read (or at the very least scrolled slowly through) the article before you're allowed to share it or comment on it.
Well am calling their bluff, am not clicking - I'll let AI summarize it for me :-)