The word coming straight from MIT News (no lie!*) is that Twitter facilitates falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”. People are 70% more likely to retweet wrong news than a true story.

“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information.”

– Professor Sinan Aral, MIT Sloan School of Management–co-author of The spread of true and false news online  (Science, Mar 9, 2018).

We all know that it’s human nature to enjoy being the first to share previously unknown (but possibly false) information. This is nothing new; for example, in 1710 Jonathan Swift observed that “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” However, the technology of today allows (to paraphrase comedian Tracy Morgan) false news to travel at the speed of light, whereas what’s true continues to flow, as always, like molasses.

*Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information .