Opinion: Censorship will never be able to stop the spread of viral misinformation on social media – here’s an idea that might work

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OPINION: Tech companies have taken down fake accounts and harmful misinformation during elections. But these efforts are like a game of whack-a-mole.

Facebook has been quietly experimenting with reducing the amount of political content it puts in users’ news feeds. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that the way the company’s algorithms work can be a problem.

Throughout millions of years of evolution, these principles have been coded into the human brain in the form of cognitive biases that come with names like familiarity, mere-exposure and bandwagon effect. If everyone starts running, you should also start running; maybe someone saw a lion coming and running could save your life. You may not know why, but it’s wiser to ask questions later.

Social media such as Facebook FB, -2.24%, Instagram, Twitter TWTR, +0.29%, YouTube GOOG, -2.02% and TikTok rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take as input what you “like,” comment on and share – in other words, content you engage with. The goal of the algorithms is to maximize engagement by finding out what people like and ranking it at the top of their feeds.

Algorithms aren’t the only thing affected by engagement bias – it can affect people, too. Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times someone is exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the urge to pay attention to it and share it.

First, because of people’s tendency to associate with similar people, their online neighborhoods are not very diverse. The ease with which a social-media user can unfriend those with whom they disagree pushes people into homogeneous communities, often referred to as echo chambers. Dialing down engagement What to do? Technology platforms are currently on the defensive. They are becoming more aggressive during elections in taking down fake accounts and harmful misinformation. But these efforts can be akin to a game of whack-a-mole.

 

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Appropriate photo of guiding the herd, Now if only the Sheep understood how they're being guided to believe/comply with the current Agenda fed through the Media. What's their destination?

Complete & utter nonsense. They can zero these accounts in seconds. They know exactly who’s generating them. They also kowtow to authoritarian regimes for access to their populace - google and apple eliminated navalny app at the behest of the Kremlin - one of many examples.

wow

They’re not doing nearly as good a job of this as they could be doing. Right jack Twitter?

Yes!

good

Social media owned by 5 corps that own over 90 pc of world media are the ones spreading decent, fear, hate, fake news etc..ppl need to distance themselves from media's influence it's propoganda status..all 5 run by one ppl bar the 1 that won't declare his loyalties

It's simple deletefacebook

Here’s the only single way: Social media companies should voluntarily shut down

Haha I like how you use sheep in your picture lol 😆

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