We are all worried about Russian and Korean bots. But, it turns out, they just help us be the biggest problems of all.

A bunch of MIT pros have discerned just that fact. S. Vosoughi , Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral of MIT (the first two from MIT’s media lab) published the results of their study in Science .

Before this, rumors were studied- and we knew how badly and quickly rumors get spread. And, that was not new news. The Talmud (Arachin, 15B) explains the problems of lashon hara- how false facts get spread. And, that developed into full-fledged tale by the mid 1700s.  Here’s one of my favorite stories/instructions about rumormongers.

A businessman was too busy spreading stories he heard. And, his anecdotes kept the townspeople amused. Except…Once he spread a tale that backfired. Everyone realized who spread the false tale and, therefore, avoided him like the plague. So, he went to the town rabbi for help.

Who informed the fellow that spreading tales was bad whether they were true or not. Under the rules of the Tora, they were all lashon hara (slander). And, they can’t be undone.

When the fellow asked what he could do, the rabbi told him to bring back a feather pillow. Even though he was flabbergasted, the fellow did so. The rabbi handed him a knife, told him to slit the pillow and shake it out the window. The fellow, shocked beyond belief, said they would make a mess. The rabbi said- do it now. And, the fellow complied and watched the feathers fly every which way.

After a few minutes, the rabbi commanded the fellow to retrieve the feathers. To stuff them back into the pillow. The fellow declared that was impossible. The feathers had spread far and wide.

And, the rabbi declared that is exactly what he did. A rumor spreads far and wide and its effects can never be retrieved.

Which is exactly why we must examine each “fact” we wish to share with others. To ensure that it is true, exactly as it was intended, and of impeccable pedigree.

Which is why this MIT study of every tweet promulgated from 2006 through 2017 tells us so much. The three researchers found that Fake News tweets travel far more broadly than one would expect- even beyond those of a true fact.

Instead of ascertaining themselves whether a “fact” were true or not, the researchers relied upon Snopes.com, politifact.com, and a few other source identifiers. These source verifiers were in agreement between 95 and 98% of the time.

What the researchers found was that false ‘facts” traveled further and faster than the true facts.

Moreover, false facts that spread far and wide began from an unverified account with very few Twitter followers. Not what one would expect!

It turns out that Fake News tweets were 70% more likely to be retweeted than actual facts. Perhaps because they were more novel (and less constrained by reality).

Moreover, this data demonstrated that it wasn’t bots that were to blame for false rumors. The researchers did find bots clearly were “designed just to increase anarchy in online social systems.”  Moreover, the data implies that rating news as false may actually cause such falsehoods to spread further.

In particular, the researchers found that tweets that instilled fear, disgust, or surprise were the ones most likely to spread far and wide. Not so with those that aroused us to feel joy or trust.  The research found that bots work just as hard making false stories spread as they do the true stories.  Which means we humans are the reasons Fake News gets spread.

So much for Newsguard.

Or, as Robert Burns quipped, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry by  definition. No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it.”