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[deleted] t1_jaw8crg wrote
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[deleted] t1_javo2lb wrote
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Wagamaga OP t1_javfd57 wrote
A new study based on a massive dataset of posts collected from Facebook pages and groups in the runup to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election finds that visual misinformation is widespread across the platform, and that it is highly asymmetric across party lines, with right-leaning images five to eight times more likely to be misleading.
In “Visual misinformation on Facebook,” published this week in the Journal of Communication, scholars from Texas A&M University’s Department of Communication & Journalism, Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and the George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics collected and analyzed nearly 14 million posts from more than 14,000 pages and 11,000 public groups from August through October 2020.
From this corpus, the researchers arrived at a representative data set of political images, and another of images that specifically depicted political figures. An analysis found that 23% of political images in a sample contained misinformation, while 20% of those that depicted a political figure were misleading.
https://techpolicy.press/on-facebook-visual-misinfo-widespread-highly-asymmetric-across-party-lines/
Duende555 t1_jaw4wnx wrote
Unfortunately, this trend closely tracks the decline of print media and journalism in general. As subscriptions decline, more and more companies are looking towards easy click-bait tactics and misleading images or headlines to generate engagement. This has been apparent for a number of years with low-quality click-bait websites, but is now increasingly seen at the level of "quality" newspapers and news sources like the New York Times.
People want easy answers to simplify a complicated world and misinfo usually targets that.
ghostfaceschiller t1_jax0gd8 wrote
Genuinely amazing to me that ppl can look at the content and conclusions of this study and come back with “yep just like the New York Times”
yosakis t1_jb13gcw wrote
Well it is what it is people want to relate to think even when they have not read any print media for some time.
They will still say things like this it is that's something that is never going to change.
Duende555 t1_jax1dpj wrote
Don't know what to say my guy. The decline in print media has closely followed the rise in disinfo and Foxification of news. All competing for the same clicks and same attention economy.
Pure4x4 t1_jazpbfd wrote
People cannot get their heads out of their phones so I don't think anyone is going to read the print media anymore.
And also I don't think that the print media is any good they were feeding propaganda in the past and they continue to do so.
doctorclark t1_jaymm7u wrote
The OP specifically calls out the differences in information quality across party lines. If the decline in print media alone explained misinformation's rise because of the attention economy, as you state, then what explains the party-line bias for amount of misinformation?
LandmassWave t1_jayy9xm wrote
Selection bias and evaluation bias.
Don't forget that the lab leak theory and Hunter's laptop were both "misinformation" and the golden shower dossier was real.
eudemonist t1_jb46plm wrote
And Michael Avenatti was a badass lawyer.
Duende555 t1_jayrndl wrote
Okay I'm tired today and don't really want to fight about this.
My point wasn't that the decline in print media alone explain misinformation's rise - my point was that the rise in misinformation and a diminished attention economy secondary to the internet *partially* explains the decline in print media AND has, in turn, led to print media mimicking the click bait tactics and misleading headline style that captures attention. Basically, print media is declining and increasingly trying to ape the style of Fox in an attempt to slow their own decline. And that's bad.
Also I'm tired today so that's probably all I got right now.
doctorclark t1_jaysl0u wrote
That explanation cleared up my misreading of your proposed causality. I agree about print media's unfortunate mimicry of clickbait tacticrs that were born online.
Duende555 t1_jayt04s wrote
Ah good. And yeah it’s a concerning trend.
JPBEH33R t1_jaz8cfz wrote
And with the advent of apps like Tik Tok the attention is man of people is going to sink even more now.
People really find hard to read any kind of newspapers for anything these days.
mindfu t1_jaz3nyy wrote
And along similar lines, the end of the fairness doctrine under the Reagan administration helped set this up.
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mindfu t1_jb27x4u wrote
> The fairness doctrine only applied to media broadcast over public airwaves and worked to limit political discussion of controversial topics.
Sure, and also have that discourse be less inflammatory when discussed. The net bonus was a much less overheated political climate than what we have now, and also with much less misinformation.
Of course, to be effective nowadays a fairness doctrine would have to apply to non-airwaves broadcasting like cable and social media. That would be very complicated. But some way of limiting misinformation in particular is deeply needed.
>President's including Kennedy and Nixon used the fairness doctrine to try and silence dissenting opinions.
How was JFK using the fairness doctrine to silence dissent? Curious for more info.
Brokenspokes68 t1_jay8nns wrote
Have you confused the New York Post with the Times?
Duende555 t1_jayehtr wrote
Have you been following the Times lately?
messengerkindaguy t1_jaxjna2 wrote
Since most find it challenging to really feel what “Five to Eight times More Misleading” actually means, I find it helpful to use percentages instead:
“Right-leaning images were 500 - 800% more likely than Left-leaning images to be Misleading.”
Silverfrost_01 t1_jay6j2k wrote
I don’t think that’s any better
Macktologist t1_jayjlwk wrote
Yeah that’s worse. I feel like people can misinterpret that to mean 500 times.
doctorclark t1_jaym7du wrote
We should make it into a visual graph and post it to FB.
psabev t1_jaz6l5i wrote
If we do posted on FB then people are going to make meanings out of it.
There is just now around it this is how everything goes on the Facebook because it is full of the dumb people.
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SneeringAnswer t1_jayowgs wrote
"For every viral meme talking about how college debt is a capitalist scam, there were 5 to 8 viral memes about how covid vaccines will turn you gay then shoot your dog"
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayq6m9 wrote
Not a fair comparison. College debt is a capitalist scam.
6763497asda t1_jb08k42 wrote
It is not a comparison actually he is just talking about the length of propaganda and the scams which are present on the Facebook.
He is not saying that one thing is better than the other.
newroll121aa t1_jazckix wrote
And the most f***** up thing about it is that many people would actually believe it.
Of course that is not the how things work but people will believe everything that they see on the internet.
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BtcJoey t1_jb0ull1 wrote
It is all propaganda and it is all miss leading and we should not believe any of it that we see online.
Especially we should not believe the things that we see on the Facebook.
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crother t1_jayyfeh wrote
I wonder how many were memes.
the_hack_is_back t1_jax2po5 wrote
Like what? The lab leak theory?
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayqo0w wrote
It's important to distinguish between natural virus accidentally infecting a person vs an engineered virus, designed to kill people.
The right are still pushing the narrative that the virus was engineered in a lab specifically to kill people. Also that Fauci funded it.
No organization has concluded that that is realistic. The only conclusions being drawn are that there is a possibility, with a low confidence, that a natural virus being studied in a lab accidentally infected one of the scientists studying it.
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_Ballbuster_ t1_jayvfu6 wrote
Jon Stewart couldn't have said it more plainly for even you.
"You're telling me, the covid vaccine in Wuhan, didn't come from the Covid lab ... in Wuhan .. "
Hell even the Energy Dept. and Feds are admitting to it the last couple weeks. If you still believe that you weren't lied to and the people who called this out years ago who were silenced were not correct this whole time - then there's no helping you.
mindfu t1_jaz4leb wrote
I'm looking for a transcript of Colbert's response. I haven't found it yet, but as I recall Colbert pointed out that it doesn't take a lab to cause venereal disease to spring out in Cancun during spring break. Even if the disease gets named after Cancun.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayvoyn wrote
I think it is you who is beyond help
LandmassWave t1_jayyk3t wrote
A lab leak is by definition either negligent or malicious. From there it's just speculation.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayyr2d wrote
No, the "lab leak" theory that was spread was specifically an engineered virus. That did not happen.
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kbsalerno t1_jazoji8 wrote
Well there a lot of theories around it about how the Corona virus happened.
And I used to remember when people were in one camp or the other they did not believe anyone else.
dammitredditname t1_jaxb894 wrote
"Color me shocked!" He said in mock amazement.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_javnhk1 wrote
While I would intuitively agree with the results, I still wonder how it could be possible to do a study like this in an unbiased manner?
fractiousrhubarb t1_javzcbo wrote
Probably test the statements against actual reality?
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jawy76z wrote
You have to consider sarcasm, context, multiple interpretations, metaphoric meanings and in the end you would interpret any statement depending on your bias even before testing it against the "actual reality" of which rarely is black and white and easy to determine or validate.
mindfu t1_jaz4vi3 wrote
It's not that difficult if the misinformation is blatant. For example, anything implying vaccines don't work, or Fauci tried engineering covid with Bill Gates, and so forth.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jb0215s wrote
> For example, anything implying vaccines don't work
Even this statement can be understood in multitude of different ways. What does "not work" even mean? Did the vaccines work in creating herd immunity? No. Did vaccines work in terms of reducing deaths and hospitalisations? Yes.
> Fauci tried engineering covid with Bill Gates
Can also be interpreted/understood in multitude of different ways.
So interpreter can choose to interpret those in any biased way to that interpreter. For example they can choose on the first statement to mean, that this statement implies that vaccine have had absolutely no positive effect at all which makes the statement false, while bias in other direction could interpret it that vaccines didn't do what was initially publicly advertised or promised which makes the statement true for them if they consider public advertising claiming that you wouldn't get infected.
Like you could go into this thought pattern of, "these crazies certainly mean that not work means that vaccines don't have absolutely any positive effect, non biased person can see that, so surely that's the correct way to interpret it. This statement makes them not get the vaccine so I'm definitely in the right in determining this statement to be misinformation", but it doesn't seem wholly scientific to me. Fact is pandemic still proceeded even after vaccine rollout, so in some sense they did work, but did they work enough? Does saying "not work" mean "not work to end the pandemic or not work at all"?
And you are saying "implying not work", which would be even more unclear, than a clear statement of saying "they don't work". Implying not to work, could be someone just claiming they got infected even though they took the vaccine and being frustrated about it.
If you determine that any message that would get people to vaccinate, is "true information" and anything that might make them avoid getting to do that is "misinformation", it might be more obvious. But is that what you are looking for? Because certainly you can say truths either way and definitely lie in any direction.
On the "not work" topic, you take this fact check as an example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-gates-idUSL1N2S7292
So you can see that all sides are cherry picking/biased here.
Reuters title said that the original statement is "Fact Check-Bill Gates did not say COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective"
- Where did anyone claim "Bill Gates said COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective". Maybe somewhere someone did, but in the examples, I'm seeing "not working well" which is clearly a subjective statement.
- Next ineffective in terms of what? Ineffective in terms of blocking transmission? Bill Gates did strongly imply that.
- etc, etc, etc. So all sides have at least some amount of bias here, either in how they interpret the claims, how they fill in the blanks, etc.
mindfu t1_jb10ad9 wrote
>Even this statement can be understood in multitude of different ways.
It's true that you can find ways to misunderstand it if you're looking to. That's separate from these kinds of statements having more than enough common understanding for this sort of social study.
If you were requiring this same level of resistance to alternate interpretation for all other well-known and generally agreed-upon terms in politics, pretty much no social study would be possible.
I think we've both laid our positions out pretty well, and know where each other stand. It doesn't seem like we're going to change each other's mind soon, so cheers and best.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jb1vsy3 wrote
I do see issues with most social studies to be fair, and it often would feel like there must have been baked in bias affecting those.
Even with more concrete sciences there is a lot of possibility for cherry picking, and many other flaws stemming from biases. You could keep pre emptively checking for potential datasets that might be most likely to agree with your bias.
But again I personally, intuitively, based on what I have seen, would also guess that right side does a lot more misinformation, but then there is also a question of how much more and how much of that is coming due to bias from the study authors.
Because there is a certain point of interpretation where you draw the line and this could affect the results a lot. Where is the line drawn for any topics from either side to give benefit of the doubt.
And politics being such a subject worst in terms of biases.
I would like to see concrete random sample of how they classified the content, that would be interesting, but seems behind a paywall.
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Larry_Linguini t1_jaw9udk wrote
https://i.imgur.com/GTubHzH.png When you have stuff like this from your political fact checkers I doubt anything can be unbiased.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayr406 wrote
Those two statements are in contradiction. It looks like a typo. It says that Russian oil imports were up only 28%. I think the second bullet is meant to say that the US doubled it's oil imports in total, not just from Russia.
Also what website is that from? There's no source information, just a cropped screenshot. That's pretty bad evidence for a science subreddit
Larry_Linguini t1_jaytc8b wrote
It's from politifact, they state again that it doubled later in the article.. it's clearly nonsense. Their main argument is that we don't rely so heavily on Russian oil in general, why they made the title what it is I can only assume is done as a "gotcha". This shouldn't be the norm for a fact checking website but politifact and snopes has done this type of thing plenty of times.
fforw t1_jazw9kr wrote
And even worse, gotchas like this "balance" the score.
Inaccuracy here: One Misinformation
"Jewish Space Lasers": One Misinformation
timoshitskiy t1_jb1kx04 wrote
Trust me nothing that you see online is unbiased, everyone has got their point of view and they are going to push their agenda according to their point of view.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jayq43u wrote
Source? i.e. can you send a link to the original site this image came from?
btw- it’s worth mentioning that if I really wanted to know a specific thing about oil imports I’d go to wherever the trade data info originally came from, that being as close to reality as I can get.
[deleted] t1_jaytkae wrote
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bobsafepayment t1_jb1xk8f wrote
Cannot trust any source these days because they all have their bias.
People are going to push the opinions with they believe in so it depends on your perspective also.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jb26rs3 wrote
But you must trust the source of the image you posted, otherwise you’d not have posted it?
The “can’t trust any source” meme is actually designed to work for the right/ corporate interests. Collective actions requires trust. Anything that harms trust empowers the right.
I trust media independent media outlets like Crikey.com.au and MichaelWest.com.au
I don’t trust News Corp because it was founded by an Australian mining magnate (in 1922) specifically to make propaganda.
krucen t1_jaz3gyu wrote
What's the issue? Crude oil isn't the only oil we import.
I can't truthfully say we've doubled cracker imports, by only pointing to a doubling of graham cracker imports.
Larry_Linguini t1_jaz8zb8 wrote
Alright, you may be on to something here.
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CaudallyReinsure396 t1_jb00upf wrote
The concept of reality is different for everyone because everyone has different kind of ideologies that they believe in.
And what you may think is true or not depends on which side you are on.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jb03p6p wrote
People have different world models, but the difference between a delusion and reality is that reality is still there when you stop believing in it.
In this case you could repeat the same experiment (ie, looking at the same set of posts) and fact check them against reality (an example of which could be political voting records) to find out if they contained misinformation, categorize them on whether which party they supported and tabulate the results.
It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a reasonable and justifiable description of reality.
Aerojhh t1_jazklec wrote
There are ways to conduct the study but the problem is how you are going to bring people on a consensus.
Because people believe what they are seeing on the social media.
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WasChristRipped t1_jax1t5o wrote
So...avoid Facebook unless you want to talk to somebody on messenger like a normal person
EarlofIxII t1_jaxunkj wrote
Oh yeah. And Trump is a Russian agent
Brokenspokes68 t1_jay9t9o wrote
Not smart enough for that. But he is a Russian asset.
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LandmassWave t1_jayz0r0 wrote
Yeah. So are Bernie, Tulsi, Jill Stein.
Everyone I don't like is Putin.
mindfu t1_jaz58sg wrote
Not Bernie, no. But the other two were very much in support of Putin. Wittingly or unwittingly.
stevechris2205 t1_jaz33gx wrote
This should not be news to anyone because the whole Cambridge analytical was a bust, and it showd us how they use the social media to spread the miss information and the propaganda among the people.
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eudemonist t1_jaw286a wrote
One of their four major categories of "misleading images" are those framing President Biden as senile.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayqu5t wrote
Are you suggesting that there was evidence that he was senile?
eudemonist t1_jb1qwzd wrote
Exhibiting characteristics of aging such as loss of physical strength or mental acuity? I am, yes.
Are you suggesting there is evidence that Joe Biden has suffered no loss of physical or mental capability as a result of aging?
Do you believe he's actually able to shoot lasers from his eyes as well?
EDIT: Whether you think Biden has lost a step or not, clearly it's debatable at the very least. To categorize an entire side of that debate as misleading is patently ridiculous.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jb1r8ns wrote
That's not the same as being senile. You've moved the goal posts
eudemonist t1_jb2l68s wrote
That's the definition of senile, mate. What do you believe it to mean?
>Senility : the quality or state of being senile : the physical and mental decline associated with old age
>
>especially : the deterioration of cognitive functioning associated with old age
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/senility
You may not be as brilliant as you have convinced yourself you are.
LandmassWave t1_jayyn8s wrote
Good point. He's always been cognitively deficient.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayytfv wrote
Man, I can't believe how dumb people are on the science subreddit
mindfu t1_jaz4px9 wrote
Yes, and that definitely is misleading.
Unless the entire GOP Congress was outwitted at the state of the Union by the senile man. Which certainly wouldn't speak well for the GOP Congress.
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qiwiqwacker t1_jb0m8g9 wrote
There are all kind of people pushing all kind of agenda social media.
On which side you fall in is up to you there are different ideologies which people believe in.
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Brokenspokes68 t1_jay8bj9 wrote
Right wingers lie so much that I don't believe anything that they say without verifying through an independent source.
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SparkySailor t1_jayonx5 wrote
And who is the one deciding what is misleading?
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Gavindy_ t1_jaz6qwz wrote
Who decides what constitutes “misleading”?
Tidesticky t1_jazfgcc wrote
I think it's safe to say the same about non-visual information.
HylicSlaughterer t1_jazhiz2 wrote
Luckily the left fortified the election so that they won anyway
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Responsible_Heart365 t1_jazqxnn wrote
Zuckerfucker isn’t a human, it is a disease.
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L-Train45 t1_jb2caz5 wrote
I'm reminded of the Herman Cain awards and websites like sorryantivaxxer, who chronicle the lives and deaths of people from covid through their Facebook posts. It's shows how misinformation helps kill people. They would rather believe and post Facebook memes than and actual facts or data. Sadly it always ends the same way. A family member sends a desperate plea for prayers followed not much later by a post stating that he loved one has passed away from covid, unvaccinated of course.
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sampark1980 t1_jax6za1 wrote
What were the examples of "misinformation"? And who determined what was "misinformation" and what was legit?
Suspicious_Diver4234 t1_jayofxp wrote
Absolutely crazy, especially given it's 2020 and the technology available to combat it.
unselfishdata t1_jazcuaa wrote
That all depends which metric you use to determine "misinformation". Example, as a constitutionalist, I've said it's unlawful to force the population into vaccines, which at the time was "misinformation"...but several lawsuits later and what appears to be many more to come, it turns out I was right. Fyi: I don't really care about being right, I care about our freedom and I love my fellow man. And since Ive studied the constitution quite a bit more than the average Joe, I can confidently make such claims ahead of SCOTUS, and feel that I'm obliged to let others know.
TheWoodConsultant t1_jaw8v9z wrote
I used to run the Data Science team at meta that measured bad content on the site and I am skeptical of this study for several reasons:
-left vs right is a highly subjective measure and many misinformation topics hit both sides of the spectrum . Anti-vaccine for example is both hippies and right wing. the fact that journalists called Boogaloo and “right wing” organization illustrates
-if they really used journalists as the debunker source this is going to mean more “right” content will be debunked since there is a bit of a bias there right now.
-all misinformation is not created equal. the last time I sample tested Meta’s political misinformation image violators before the 2020 election it was more than 2/3rds memes saying to remind your democrat friends to vote on the wrong day.
-their measurement and sample methodology would be very important since it’s views that matter and not the number of images. Most images on FB receive zero views beyond the poster so they really don’t matter.
Brokenspokes68 t1_jay9857 wrote
Boogaloo is right wing. How do you come to any other conclusion seeing what they say and do. They literally advocate for a race war.
TheWoodConsultant t1_jaz75dr wrote
Boogaloo also provided armed security for BLM protests. They are a quasi anarchist, anti establishment movement that is not a coherent organization. They don’t fit neatly into a bubble but the like guns so they get called right wing.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayreh0 wrote
How many images were posted blaming antifa for something? That alone is enough to prove the study is accurate.
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mindfu t1_jaz50og wrote
What your analysis is missing there for antivaxx beliefs is the percentage of each side that believes in it. Both sides can show the problem, but they won't show the problem in equal amounts.
For example, maybe 5% of the left is anti-vaccine, versus now 40% of the right.
ghostfaceschiller t1_jazpo5t wrote
The issue is that the dude never managed “The Data Science Team” at Meta, he’s just lying
TheWoodConsultant t1_jaz8go6 wrote
I thank you missed my point that left and right and subjective and arbitrary. That said; per the NIH, before Covid around 22% on both groups believed “Vaccinations can have serious side effects that cause more harm than some of the diseases that they are supposed to prevent.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4938547/
I’m also not presenting some sort of politically charged analysis, only saying that they need to present more detail about their methodology since they are using highly subjective topics that I have have experience with.
mindfu t1_jazcf6d wrote
I didn't miss your point about left and right being an arbitrary distinction, I disagree with it. :-)
For beliefs before COVID, of course that's before COVID misinformation started. Once it started, it's pretty clear which political side was having more misinformation pushed on Facebook.
So I guess I think the methodology is clear enough. Nothing in politics or human psychology can be configured to the last decimal, but it's pretty clear at this point what the policies and opinions of the American right tend to be. And how they tend to be different from the American left.
TheWoodConsultant t1_jazehr4 wrote
Not sure how you can disagree, the terms themselves have to be subjective since they are, by definition, relative. Things that your average boomer would consider left would likely be considered right by your average gen Z. Same with a European vs. an American.
With regards to post Covid data, it will be a while before we get reliable information since in Left leaning circles people aren’t allowed to express reservations about vaccine openly like in right leaning circles and masks.
I not saying there isn’t more conservative centric info on Fb, it’s mostly a boomer platform after all, I just have concerns with their methodology given I did this work professionally and given what was presented in the article I think what they have done has the potential to be flawed.
I know there is also a tendency to put all Covid misinformed into the right/Republican bucket whatever the source. In 2020 a lot of the Covid misinformation was coming from sources that we suspected were PRC and then they spread across all political spectrums. It wasn’t until post 2020 election that it really polarized that questioning the status quo on Covid was considered right wing. Remember the democratic presidential debates when the candidates called the safety of the Covid vaccine into question?
Then in 2021 I remember neighbors in SF acting like I was crazy for discussing the danish, German, and Israel data that suggested 6-8 week between vaccine doses was safer for young men.
mindfu t1_jazj7cn wrote
> Not sure how you can disagree, the terms themselves have to be subjective since they are, by definition, relative.
They are subjective to the degree that anything involving human society isn't objective, sure. And also if politics means anything, and it does, then it's measurable enough to study. Clearly.
Ask a boomer or a zoomer which is more right wing, the GOP or the Democratic party, and you will get the GOP being right wing well more than 99.9% of the time. More than enough precision for this sort of study.
>it will be a while before we get reliable information since
About what? :) We're talking about memes that were published before 2020. We have that data.
>I not saying there isn’t more conservative centric info on Fb,
OK but that's not the point. The point is the memes that were right wing had noticeably more disinformation, by 5 to 8 times.
>I know there is also a tendency to put all Covid misinformed into the right/Republican bucket whatever the source.
OK, but that's also not what happened in this study.
>It wasn’t until post 2020 election that it really polarized that questioning the status quo on Covid was considered right wing.
No, that's not accurate. Conservative misinformation about vaccines started in 2019. Mid-year at the latest.
SerialStateLineXer t1_jazyfer wrote
>“Vaccinations can have serious side effects that cause more harm than some of the diseases that they are supposed to prevent.”
That's technically true. The COVID-19 vaccines could very rarely cause GBS, anaphylaxis, and dangerous blood clots, all of which are more dangerous than COVID-19 for the typical person.
Cost-benefit analysis heavily favored getting vaccinated, of course, but that's a very badly designed survey question.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jb1xvlv wrote
Yes, this question definitely needs to specify that on the whole population level over large numbers.
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YoungEgalitarianDude t1_jaxaoci wrote
Great comment
ZZZapatistian t1_jay1wme wrote
Not because Right leaning people are stupid, as Blue leaning people seem to think.
Right leaning people are more willing to reject the government/academia/media story of America because they understand the falsity of that story.
Post modern America is about stories and narratives and morals of stories, not underlying truth. Either because the truth is unknown, even though it is certain (COVID).
COVID is an example of this -- COVID truth regarding mask wearing is unclear. Source of virus is unclear.
Brokenspokes68 t1_jay9c2u wrote
I rejected the falsity of your education.
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mindfu t1_jaz5ds3 wrote
Reality is about the underlying truth.
If you want to be in step with reality, you have to want to be in step with the best evidence and expert review you can get.
There is no certainty, but you're better off digging for something that's observable rather than believing the real world doesn't matter. Or worse, that aspects of the real world outside yourself can change and be in step with whatever your favorite story is.
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Mouthtuom t1_jaxkal1 wrote
Nah. It’s just confirming the obvious.
Betsey23 t1_jawtcks wrote
Wasn’t there just a big thing about the FBI working with big social media companies with Facebook included? I wonder why so many posts were labeled as “misinfo”. Not to mention the incredibly bias 3rd party “fact checkers”. Just my opinion/food for thought.
Brokenspokes68 t1_jay9qb3 wrote
Facts have a liberal bias. It didn't always work out that way. But the right has embraced many false narratives. It started with denying climate change. The big lie about the 2020 election is just the most recent, and most damaging to our democracy, false narrative that the right has embraced.
mendog2112 t1_jax2hur wrote
I call complete BS. These metrics are completely biased based on what was considered misinformation at the time like the Biden laptop being Russian disinformation which was misinformation then but is accurate information now. Take this report with a huge grain of salt.
klaaptrap t1_jaw2718 wrote
Pity that we can’t actually read the study.
Neobidymium t1_jawdxd9 wrote
If you search on Google scholar, you can find it in a free pdf form:
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TheWoodConsultant t1_jaw5uci wrote
Yeah I have my doubts on the methodology.
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