Re: Misinfo & Social Media Bubbles

As a form of friction, platforms could also explicitly nudge people to pause and think about accuracy before they are about to share content. We did a study where we showed some news stories to people one at a time and asked them whether they would share each. We required some people to simply indicate whether the content is accurate or inaccurate before asking them whether they would share it. These people ended up sharing less false content than before (there was also a reduction in sharing of true content although to a lesser degree). For some people, we added to the friction by not only asking them about accuracy but also requiring them to explain why they believed the content is or is not accurate. For these people, sharing of false content was even further reduced: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3449092 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3449092>

Farnaz Jahanbakhsh

> On Sep 27, 2021, at 5:17 PM, Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov> wrote:
> 
> The idea of adding friction is a good one. It came up in the UX of credibility subgroup of CredCo, where it was observed that designing the interface to make it extremely easy to share content makes users more likely to share misinformation. There have been several publications in the UX literature about that (e.g., https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2851581.2892410 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2851581.2892410>).
> -Annette
> 
>> On Sep 27, 2021, at 10:27 AM, Owen Ambur <Owen.Ambur@verizon.net <mailto:Owen.Ambur@verizon.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> This article <https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/Media/facebook-algorithm> by Filippo Menczer of The Fulcrum was reprinted in our local newspaper, under the title "How we fall for misinformation through social media bubbles."  It references "complex contagion," which figures prominently in Damon Centola's book entitled Change: How to Make Big Things Happen.
>> 
>> Menczer suggests one approach to address the problem is to "add friction ... to slow down the process of spreading information."  
>> 
>> That calls to mind not only Daniel Kahneman's distinction between fast and slow thinking <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow> but also Donald Norman's assertion <http://ambur.net/smart.pdf> that the greatest peril is that of “experiencing when one should be reflecting ... where entertainment takes precedence over thought.”
>> 
>> Among the strategies posed by Centola are:
>> 
>> Don't rely on contagiousness
>> Use the network periphery
>> Design team networks to improve discovery and reduce bias
>> It will be interesting to see what this group may decide to try to do together along those lines.
>> 
>> In the meantime, The Fulcrum's about statement is now available in StratML format at https://stratml.us/drybridge/index.htm#FLCRM <https://stratml.us/drybridge/index.htm#FLCRM>  Their tag line is "Leveraging Our Differences".
>> 
>> My 2.0 rewrite of the Serenity  Prayer is available on LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/owenambur_when-i-first-posted-my-20-rendition-of-the-activity-6846603303095156736-ftIg>.
>> 
>> Owen
>> 
>