The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
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every show 44 of 44
Fake Facebook accounts hold more influence because users expect authenticity
“Because it's so hard to create fake accounts on Facebook, the accounts that are fake might actually be a little bit more powerful because people don't expect there to be as many fake people on Facebook as they do Twitter, and so they might actually have more o…”
Authoritarian regimes weaponize Germany's content moderation laws to silence dissent
“We're already also seeing authoritarian governments adopt this law into their own into their own legal systems to silence dissent and to go after journalists who are publishing so-called fake news and whatnot.”
Americans shared junk news at a one-to-one ratio in 2016
“In 2016 we found that Americans on average were sharing about a one to one ratio of junk news to professionally produced information.”
The junk news sharing ratio worsened to 1.3:1 during 2018 midterms
“In 2018, when we redid this analysis during the midterm, the ratio of junk news actually went up. And so it went to like 1.2 or 1.3 to one.”
US users share vastly more junk news than European democracies
“During the UK elections, and Germany, and France, and Sweden, Mexico, all of those countries have much lower levels of junk news to professionally produced news shares than the US.”
Platforms ignored fake accounts because active user metrics drove market valuations
“I think for a long time there hasn't been an incentive for them to, because the more active accounts there are on these platforms The more they're valued on the market, right? Because all of a sudden there's this huge user base of people, people that these pla…”
Direct content regulation fails to fix the underlying drivers of disinformation
“When governments go after the content of what's being shared I think that's a mistake. I don't think that's getting to the underlying problem that's sort of fueling the fake content or the disinformation to spread or to go viral in the first place.”
Social media platforms will fail to curb manipulation before 2020 elections
“The fact that we saw an increase already in 2018 you know, I don't think the platforms are going to be able to get their act together in time for 2020.”
Deepfakes are overhyped and will not become a major political threat
“I think, you know, there's a lot of hype about deep fake right now. I don't know how, how real it's actually going to be. And, you know, we're already seeing, you know, a lot of the research agencies like DARPA and things like that work on being able to detect…”
Authoritarian governments have used social bots since early platform days
“From some of the research that I've done here at the OII and on the Computational Propaganda Project, we know that these techniques have been experimented with by governments for a long time. We've had evidence of them going back to, you know, even the early d…”
Political actors use traditional SEO tactics to game Google and YouTube
“We're seeing a lot more gaming of the algorithms as well, and more of these kind of sophisticated techniques. So not just liking and sharing, but using specific keywords to get content trending, to try to get things at the top of Google's search algorithm, try…”
Disinformation actors target locally dominant platforms like WhatsApp in India
“The people who want to manipulate public opinion, they're gonna go to where the people are, and the platforms that the people are using. So in the US, we tend to see a lot of these campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, because that's the platforms that the majori…”
Oxford researchers found widespread meme-based disinformation in Brazilian WhatsApp groups
“We looked at WhatsApp in Brazil, for example, and in that study we joined a bunch of different groups Were looking at the kinds of images and the kinds of conversations that were being shared. And there were a lot of memes that were being used to public, to pu…”
Twitter's open API and anonymity allow more automated fake accounts
“Twitter tends to have a lot more of these fake accounts that use some kind of automation. There are also a bunch of tools that allow you to, you know, automate your activity on Twitter, things like Hootsuite and whatnot.”
Social media users in 2016 swing states shared more junk news
“And we also in 2016 did a study on the swing states. And you know, in actual swing state, States people were sharing more junk news compared to uncontested ones.”
Sophisticated bots use natural language technology to reply in comment threads
“Some of the more sophisticated bots might actually interact with real people so they blend, like, chatbot bot technology and, you know, we all have been to those customer service pages where the thing pops up at the bottom and says, hi, can I help you today? T…”