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Google and MIT prove social media can slow the spread of fake news

Fast Company: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, the public has been battling a whole other threat: what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called a “pandemic of misinformation.” Misleading propaganda and other fake news is easily shareable on social networks, which is threatening public health. As many as one in four adults has claimed they will not get the vaccine. And so while we finally have enough doses to reach herd immunity in the United States, too many people are worried about the vaccines (or skeptical that COVID-19 is even a dangerous disease) to reach that threshold. However, a new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Google’s social technology incubator Jigsaw holds some hope to fixing misinformation on social networks. In a massive study involving 9,070 American participants—controlling for gender, race, and partisanship—researchers found that a few simple UI interventions can stop people from sharing fake news around COVID-19…”

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