Why is so Much Fake News Being Shared? Lorem Ipsum Might Hold an Answer

There’s been a lot of discussion about fake news of late—how prevalent it is, how it influenced the recent U.S. election, how to spot it.

When it comes to spotting it, that’s easy; if the title contains an exclamation mark, it’s either fake or not worth your time; that kind of punctuation is almost never used by traditional journalists.

Similarly, any headline containing the words “amazing,” bizarre,” or “unbelievable,” especially when accompanied by exclamation marks, are either fake or to be avoided.

Of course, even if you click on the link, a cursory read of the article would quickly tell you whether the article is fake.

But that’s one of the problems with fake news; I wonder how many people actually bother doing that?

Research reported by the Washington Post suggests that might be the case.

Last June the satirical news site the Science Post published a block of gobbledygook “lorem ipsum” text under the under the headline: “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting.”

The fake “article” contained two repeated sentences at the beginning:

“A recent study showed that 70% of people actually never read more than the headline of a science article before commenting and sharing. Most simply see a headline they like and click share and make a comment. A recent study showed that 70% of people actually never read more than the headline of a science article before commenting and sharing. Most simply see a headline they like and click share and make a comment.”

What followed after was the “lorem ipsum” text that publishers use to fill out a page before the actual text is inserted.

And what happened?

Almost 46,000 people shared the post—an example, the Washington Post said, “of life imitating comedy.”

Another new study reported by the Post was done by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute. It found that 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked.

In other words, most people appear to re-tweet news without ever reading it.

“People are more willing to share an article than read it,” study co-author Arnaud Legout said in a statement.

“This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper.”

According to the Post, these blind shares and likes “are really important in determining what news gets circulated and what just fades off the public radar. So your thoughtless retweets, and those of your friends, are actually shaping our shared political and cultural agendas.”

Why do people share links they never read?

It could be a case of the so-called mirroring effect, where people like and share things they think will make them look smart, generous or caring to their friend on social media—it’s part of their online brand personality.

It could be a case of confirmation bias; Hillary Clinton may not have done all those terrible things, but I wouldn't put it past her! And so we click on "share."

Or maybe it's just the rush of the moment; who has time to actually read all those articles our friends send us on Facebook or Twitter?

And so a lot of fake news, and other kinds of news that might best be avoided, appears in our news feeds more by accident than design.