Debunk, don’t ‘prebunk,’ and other psychology lessons for social media moderation

Debunk, don’t ‘prebunk,’ and other psychology lessons for social media moderation

3 years ago
Anonymous $K6XgmDN5_o

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/25/debunk-dont-prebunk-and-other-psychology-lessons-for-social-media-moderation/

If social networks and other platforms are to get a handle on disinformation, it’s not enough to know what it is — you have to know how people react to it. Researchers at MIT and Cornell have some surprising but subtle findings that may affect how Twitter and Facebook should go about treating this problematic content.

MIT’s contribution is a counterintuitive one. When someone encounters a misleading headline in their timeline, the logical thing to do would be to put a warning before it so that the reader knows it’s disputed from the start. Turns out that’s not quite the case.