Researchers have found that a small group of social media accounts are responsible for spreading fake news about the US election.
On the morning of November 5, Eric Trump, one of President Trump’s sons, asked his Facebook followers to report various instances of voter fraud with the hashtag Stop the Steal – his post was shared over 5,000 times. By late afternoon, “Diamond and Silk” (Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson) had shared the hashtag along with a video alleging voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Their post was shared over 3,800 times. That evening, activist Brandon Straka asked people to protest in Michigan with the banner #StoptheSteal. His post was shared over 3,700 times.
The following week, the phrase “StoptheSteal” was used to promote dozens of rallies that spread false claims about the US.
An investigation by Avaaz, a global human rights group, the Elections Integrity Partnership and The New York Times shows how a small group of people – mostly influential social media figures – helped spread the fake news that led to these rallies.
“Because of the way Facebook’s algorithm works, these superspreaders are able to do something like this,” said Fadi Quran, director of Avaaz.
Across Facebook, there were about 3.5 million interactions — including likes, comments and shares — on public posts mentioning “Stop the Steal” during the week of Nov. 3, according to the research. Of those, the profiles of Eric Trump, Diamond and Silk and Straka accounted for a disproportionate share — about 6 percent, or 200,000, of those interactions.
While the group’s impact was notable, it didn’t come close to matching the reach of Donald Trump’s posts. All 20 of the most engaged on Facebook containing the word “election” in the past week were from Mr. Trump, according to Crowdtangle, an analytics tool owned by Facebook. All of those posts were deemed false or misleading by independent fact-checkers.
Unfounded allegations of election fraud were used by the president and his supporters to question the vote count and voting process in many states.
Allegations of election fraud have continued to proliferate in recent weeks, driven by a handful of specific accounts . A look at a four-week period beginning in mid-October shows that President Trump and the top 25 superspreaders of misinformation accounted for 28.6 percent of the interactions people had with that content, Avaaz analysis shows.
To find the superspreaders, Avaaz compiled a list of 95,546 such posts on Facebook. These posts were liked, shared or commented on nearly 60 million times by people on Facebook. Avaaz found that just 33 of the 95,546 posts were responsible for over 13 million of these interactions.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company had added tags to posts that misrepresented the election process and directed people to an election information center.
The company has not commented on why accounts that repeatedly share fake news, such as Straka and Diamond and Silk, have not been punished. Facebook has previously said that President Trump, along with other elected officials, are in special status and are treated differently.
Many of the superspreader accounts had millions of interactions on their Facebook posts in the past month. The accounts were active on both Twitter and Facebook.
On Twitter, the accounts of President Trump, his son Eric, Mr. Straka and Mr. Levin were among the top 20 accounts spreading fake news about the election, says Ian Kennedy, a researcher at the University of Washington.
Source: New York Times
