[HN Gopher] Far-right misinformation gets by far the most engage...
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       Far-right misinformation gets by far the most engagement on
       Facebook, study says
        
       Author : drewem
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2021-03-03 22:12 UTC (49 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theweek.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theweek.com)
        
       | lawnchair_larry wrote:
       | The links to an article that links to another article that links
       | to a medium post. Better source:
       | https://medium.com/cybersecurity-for-democracy/far-right-new...
       | 
       | Considering the clear bias of the authors, their findings are not
       | surprising, and I suspect that folks on the right would disagree
       | with their classifications. Classifying "misinformation" in a
       | non-partisan way is not a straightforward task at all.
       | 
       | They also seem to be grouping things by source, not by article.
       | They appear to decide something is a "misinformation source", and
       | then count everything coming from that outlet as misinformation.
        
       | smt88 wrote:
       | My theory about this:
       | 
       | Everyone seeks information that validates them and supports the
       | things they already want to believe.
       | 
       | People with mostly mainstream views can get that validation
       | anywhere: academic studies, cable news, newspapers, friends,
       | coworkers, etc.
       | 
       | For example, I know that climate change is happening and can
       | easily consume info that fits my reality.
       | 
       | For the far-right, social media is the _only_ place to find that,
       | because major institutions mostly refuse to say it out loud. So
       | of course their engagement is high, because they crave the
       | validation and feeling that they  "aren't alone" in their extreme
       | beliefs.
        
         | drewem wrote:
         | Interesting hypothesis
        
         | thundergolfer wrote:
         | That is not true about everyone though. Everyone does it
         | sometimes in some places, but it's important to recognise that
         | some groups of people have been able to build self-critical
         | institutions and regularly consume information that challenges
         | their own views.
         | 
         | Left institutions are somewhat famous for self-criticism ("the
         | left eats its own"). Left media, such as The Ezra Klein Show,
         | regularly has right wing people on the show and it has a wonk
         | liberal host.
         | 
         | I sought out animal rights philosophy when I ate lots of meat
         | (and I've now stopped). I've read Hayek, Barry Goldwater's
         | Conscience of a Conservative (Bozell actually wrote it), and
         | Peter Thiel, and I'm on the left.
         | 
         | It is not true that everyone is the same in their information
         | seeking activities, nor true that all institutions act as
         | captured servants of some validation-seeking audience.
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | >because major institutions mostly refuse to say it out loud
         | 
         | because most of the actual content of far-right echo chambers
         | is insane. Let's be real for a second the reason why this
         | happens:
         | 
         | > _[...] "Every other type of news outlet suffers a
         | "misinformation penalty" if they share false information. The
         | analysis found that in the far left, slightly left, and center
         | categories, credible stories saw between two and five times as
         | much engagement as fake news. On the far-right, however,
         | misinformation received 426 interactions per thousand followers
         | in an average week, while credible far-right information
         | received only 259 engagements_[...]"
         | 
         | is because the average far-right reader is, to put it bluntly,
         | kind of stupid. Can you imagine what the average Economist
         | reader thinks if the Economist were to publish "the earth is
         | hollow, Bill Gates is a lizard, MAGA!".
         | 
         | This has nothing to do with 'major institutions', it's to do
         | with the people who consume far-right content. I guess if you
         | want to start to talk about solutions, you would have to stop
         | to be politically correct, ironically enough a major demand of
         | the far-right, and stop trying to pretend the consumers of this
         | content are equal in their ability to critically process
         | information.
        
       | naruvimama wrote:
       | That might also point to the tendency of the left to report
       | things that they do not agree with as misinformation.
       | 
       | And Fb like many other institutions are filled with "liberal" or
       | the virtue signaling generation.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-03 23:02 UTC)