Misinformation is Getting Worse Even Without AI
As social media companies turn away from distributing the news, they are making it easier for rumors to spread.
Over the weekend of October 6th-8th, rumors were circulating on social media - particularly X (née Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram - that the Greek Orthodox church of St. Porphyrios had been destroyed by Israel in an airstrike. On Monday the 9th, the church posted to its Facebook page that it was completely undamaged.
In the week that followed, legacy news organizations like the Associated Press, PolitiFact and others were pushing out articles debunking the claims that the “third oldest church in the world had been completely destroyed.”
On October 19th, however, the church was bombed in an airstrike that knocked out a wall and caused several casualties. Social media is again flooded with thousands of posts talking about the bombing, though this time the claims seem tempered by caution. Instead of “fully destroyed” with high casualty counts, the posts correctly indicate that the bombing occurred, but you see the word “damaged” and phrases like “not immediately clear.”
This is fascinating because the posts are now built on an actual, factual event. When the event was just a rumor, the claims were more severe, the death count exclaimed with confidence. Now that there is a real situation to describe, the rumor mill has slowed its output. One would think the exact opposite would be the case, but this is not how rumors work.
Rumors spread faster than truth, usually in direct proportion to sensationalism. Rumors also metastasize, proliferate and change as they spread, growing in strength and number as fact checkers attempt to stem the flow. This creates a somewhat counterintuitive dilemma: the more outlandish the claim, the harder it is to debunk. When you throw in the chaos of war, this problem is magnified exponentially. Now you put all of this through the inherent drama of social media, and you might as well give up on fighting the hydra altogether.
To some extent this is exactly what’s happening. In their 2023 Digital News Report, the Reuters Institute found that on the whole, people are turning away from social media as sources of news, especially from link-sharing heavy platforms like Facebook, which is now virtually synonymous with fake news. However, use of other platforms for news is growing.
The video-based platforms like TikTok and Instagram are notably increasing their share, and when you break down the sources of news, a more concerning situation is revealed. Whereas users of traditional social media platforms - like X/Twitter - are more likely to get their information from actual news organizations, who staff fact checkers and have a fiscal responsibility to publish factually accurate information, the “news” people get from platforms on the rise - like TikTok - is predominantly generated by celebrities, influencers, and individual content creators.
Part of this is just inherent to the differences between these platforms; people use different apps for different purposes. But an even bigger contributor to the decline of news distribution are company policies reacting to growing pressure from governments across the world to pay content publishers, as well as regulations demanding a clamp down on misinformation.
Meta has already announced that it is going to just straight up block the sharing of news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada in response to legislation requiring payment to content publishers. It has threatened to do the same in California in response to pending legislation that would impose a new tax on platforms that share news content. Even before this, though, its algorithms were modified across the globe to downplay news in people’s feeds. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X has removed headlines from articles, stripped news organizations of their verification, and totally abandoned fact checking, instead now relying on volunteers to add “Community Notes,” which are supposed to add context to potential misinformation but are based on Wikipedia-style submissions.
I do think people are wising up to this, however. Social media active users do continue to grow, but that growth has slowed dramatically, and a lot of the growth in each given company has more to do with poaching users from a different app (on top of simple growth in the global population; each generation is bigger than the last, after all). When TikTok gains a new user, it’s not that someone who never used social media before suddenly started, it usually means Instagram or Twitter just saw a reduction in engagement from one of theirs. Apps as a whole - from social media to mobile games to shopping apps - have also peaked in terms of total engagement. In other words, people are reading books, watching TV, listening to podcasts, and scrolling social media in about the exact same proportions year after year. Even as social media grows, it isn’t taking up any more of our lives when it comes down to our only real resource: time.
People are also growing far more intentional with their social media use. As cited above, even as use of TikTok for news has grown, it’s still only 6% of what people use the app for. That growth has far more to do with news organizations joining the party as it became clear that the app was here to stay, and less so with growing demand for that type of content. The single greatest reason people use these apps remains staying in touch with friends and family, and people are increasingly using these apps for specific purposes like seeking out mental health resources, learning how to change a tire, searching for fun things to do in your community, and, of course, shopping.
Besides, people are deeply concerned about fake news, and it’s likely that concern will continue to grow as time goes on.
Additionally, when asked what values people have when it comes to seeking out news, the following shows that the market is demanding more reliable, more diverse, and less toxicity and negative.
News organizations, meanwhile, continue to see a rise in direct subscribers. As people turn away from social media to get their news, they are turning instead directly to the news organizations themselves. The biggest benefit herein is undoubtedly the reduction in the ability to argue with people in comments, which is plausibly the very worst feature of social media altogether.
This picture as a whole actually makes me quite optimistic. While there is always something to be said about questioning what news organizations publish - healthy skepticism is a foundational component to a functional democracy, in my sincere opinion - it shouldn’t be controversial to say that an organization that gets its money from working full time on the news is going to be at least a little more inherently trustworthy than some random guy you went to high school with.
Apologies to those that went to high school with me.
