Study Finds Facebook was the Biggest Distributor of Fake News

A recent study has found that Facebook was the biggest gateway for simulated news in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.

The social media site was by far the top disseminator of false news manufactures, putting it alee of email, Google and Twitter, according to 3 political scientists. Their findings are based on actual web traffic information pulled from 2,525 Americans, all of whom consented to the study.

"Nosotros gauge that approximately one in 4 Americans visited a fake news website from October 7-November 14, 2022," their newspaper says.

Based on their sample prepare, the political scientists estimate 22 percent of the imitation news visits they identified were funneled to Americans via Facebook.

Email providers such as Yahoo or Gmail were responsible for over 6 per centum. Meanwhile, both Google and Twitter each may have spread less than ii percent.

The study, which The New York Times publicized on Tuesday, offers some actual hard data on how simulated news is being consumed. It also comes as Facebook itself is trying to fight misinformation over the platform.

3rd-party fact-checking websites have been seen as one mode to stop faux news from fooling readers. Nonetheless, these efforts appear to be declining to reach the public. According to the study, when people swallow fake news, they hardly always read the corresponding fact-check debunking the fake claims.

But even every bit the study estimates that millions of Americans are encountering fake news, most of the fourth dimension people are nonetheless viewing the real news. For instance, during the 2022 ballot, fake news fabricated up but half dozen pct of the total news articles visited by supporters of Donald Trump.

For Hillary Clinton supporters, the percentage was at 0.viii percent.

Ironically, people who read the most fake news, also read a great deal of real news, the study institute. Much of the fake news viewing was also concentrated among Trump supporters.

"The ten pct of Americans with the nigh conservative information diets consumed an average of 33.sixteen articles from pro-Trump simulated news websites," the study said.

The remaining xc per centum more rarely consumed fake news articles, averaging between 0.43 to 4.2 commodity visits in the written report period.

The professors behind the inquiry include Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College, Andrew Guess of Princeton University and Jason Reifler of the Academy of Exeter. A limitation of the study was information technology looked only at website visits, and didn't business relationship for false news consumption over mobile devices, or how users interacted with the social media platforms directly.