Reality has had a tough year. When the president of the United States is denying that thousands of Americans died in a hurricane, journalists face an uphill battle. That battle has been particularly fraught on social networks, where malicious actors have spent the past several years peddling hoaxes and sowing division.
But today I bring you at least one reason for optimism. “Trends in the Diffusion of Misinformation on Social Media,” a new study from authors at Stanford University and New York University, analyzed the performance of stories posted on fake news sites from January 2015 to July 2018. Here’s what they found (emphasis mine):
Interactions with these sites on both Facebook and Twitter rose steadily through the end of 2016. I…
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