Because platforms such as Facebook or Twitter do little content monitoring, they’re a highly useful means of spreading disinformation. Under the cover of freedom of expression, unscrupulous actors spread false information according to three principles: speed, continuity and inconsistency. An effective way to quickly spread information is to control, manually or by computers, multiple false accounts and profiles on social media. This type of account is called a bot, and they can be found by the millions on social networks and are the main producers of large-scale misinformation.
To be effective, misinformation must spread quickly, before truthful and verifiable information is put online. Truth is not a determining factor, even though the majority of propaganda news contains some truth. Nevertheless, Harvard sociologist Kathleen Carley argues that false news travel six times faster on social media than real news. At the same time, Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews show that multiple sources are more convincing than a single source, and that the frequency with which one receives this information is critical. Therefore, numbers matter.
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