Monday, March 19, 2018

Lies... Fastest Movin', Longest Livin'


Recently it’s been a proven fact, to me anyway, that nothin’ gets around faster than a good lie, otherwise known as an “alternative fact”. And, those "big lies" have outstanding stayin’ power, too, longer lived than ole Methuselah, I’d reckon.

Well, now, you don’t have to take my word for it either. There’s solid proof... from MIT.

Here’s the whole story, so help me.

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News, Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 8 Mar 2018.

“Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and deeper into the social network than accurate information.”

"It is unclear which interventions, if any, could reverse this tendency toward falsehood. “We don’t know enough to say what works and what doesn’t,” Aral told me. There is little evidence that people change their opinion because they see a fact-checking site reject one of their beliefs, for instance. Labeling fake news as such, on a social network or search engine, may do little to deter it as well."

"In short, social media seems to systematically amplify falsehood at the expense of the truth, and no one—neither experts nor politicians nor tech companies—knows how to reverse that trend. It is a dangerous moment for any system of government premised on a common public reality."


The Beach Boys - I Get Around - 1964


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