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Unlike in 2016, There Was No Spike in Misinformation This Election Cycle | The Conversation

 

State-sponsored cyberwarriors and deep-pocketed influence campaigns spread plausible misinformation – what I like to call “iffy” content – as a cost-effective way to advance their social or political cause. Others spread misinformation just to earn ad revenue.

Meanwhile, the big social media platforms struggle to implement fair editorial practices – disclosures and demotions, blocks and bans – to attenuate the spread of misinformation rather than amplify it.

How well have Facebook and Twitter done? Are they helping iffy content reach large audiences? At the University of Michigan Center for Social Media Responsibility, we have started keeping score, going back to early 2016.

We compute a daily “Iffy Quotient,” the fraction of the 5,000 most popular URLs on each platform that came from a large list of sites that frequently originate misinformation and hoaxes, a list maintained by Media Bias/Fact Check. The Iffy Quotient is a way for the public to track the platforms’ progress – or lack thereof.

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Source: Unlike in 2016, there was no spike in misinformation this election cycle