How Conspiracy Theories Become ‘Truth’ on Facebook
Conspiracy theories, hoaxes and other variants of baloney have become so prevalent and intractable on Facebook that we no longer bother to debunk them. But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides some insight on exactly how misinformation spreads — with big implications for the fight against it. The paper, titled The spreading of misinformation online, comes from researchers at Boston...
We Can Hear You Now
San Francisco — Like a lot of teenagers, Aanya Nigam reflexively shares her whereabouts, activities and thoughts on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks without a qualm. But Aanya’s care-free attitude dissolved into paranoia a few months ago shortly after her mother bought Amazon’s Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather,...
