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Programming note: Standing on the very precipice of ISSUE ONE HUNDRED, The Interface is going on Spri
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| March 8 · Issue #99 · View online |
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Programming note: Standing on the very precipice of ISSUE ONE HUNDRED, The Interface is going on Spring Break! I’m managing The Verge’s team on the ground in Austin at SXSW and won’t be able to bring you the day’s news for a week. I am very sad about this but know I will feel recharged when I return to you on Monday, March 19. I reserve the right to abandon Spring Break early if the social-media world turns upside down. Otherwise I’ll see you on the 19th — and doing a bit more hey-look-at-this retweeting on Twitter, if you miss me.
Today’s big story is that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its shoes on. That quote is usually attributed to Mark Twain, but it’s also a lie — one that has been circling the globe since about 1919. Whatever the provenance of the quote, it has new data to support it. Here’s my colleague Angela Chen in The Verge on an important new study: In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the spread of all the stories verified (as either true or false) by six fact-checking organizations from 2006 to 2017. The analysis shows that false political news spreads more quickly than any other kind, like news about natural disasters or terrorism, and predictably, it spikes during events like the 2012 and 2016 US presidential elections. (The researchers deliberately use the term “false news” because “fake news” is too politicized, they write.) Though the Twitter accounts that spread untruthful stories were likely to have fewer followers and tweet less than those sharing real news, false news still spreads quickly because it is seen as novel, the study says. First, the researchers went to six fact-checking organizations and pulled out all the news stories they had verified as true or false. (The six orgs were Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck, Truth or Fiction, Hoax Slayer, and Urban Legends.) Next, the researchers — who had access to the entire Twitter archive — looked for mentions of these stories on the social media site. Each time they found a mention, they would try to determine whether that mention was the original tweet, or if it was replying to or repeating a different tweet. That way, they could trace the origin of the story, and then track the ways that the information spread through Twitter. Ultimately, their dataset included about 126,000 stories tweeted by 3 million people more than 4.5 million times. Their analysis shows that true news rarely spread to more than 1,000 people, but the top 1 percent of false news could spread to as many as 100,000. This wasn’t because the accounts tweeting false news were particularly influential, but because we’re more likely to share news that seems interesting and new. “Novel information is thought to be more valuable than redundant information,” says study co-author Sinan Aral, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “People who spread novel information gain social status because they’re thought to be ‘in the know’ or to have inside information.” “False news was significantly more novel than true news,” Aral says. “And that makes sense — when you are unconstrained by reality, you can come up with much more novel information.” A sentiment analysis in the Science paper revealed that replies to false news tweets contained more expressions of surprise or disgust than true news. And perhaps that’s why fake celebrity deaths so often pervade Twitter: They’re surprising, emotional, irresistible to share. And this “novelty” hypothesis has been shown in other studies. In a 2017 paper that Rand co-authored, when participants see headlines repeated, they’re more likely to believe them (a consequence of what’s known as the illusory truth effect), but less likely to share them on social media. Other research has found that the more morally or emotionally charged a tweet, the more likely it is to spread within a particular ideological group. Where does that leave us? Aside from a few bromides to “think before you share,” I’m not really sure. I hardly know a reporter who hasn’t shared something on Twitter they found out later not to be true, much less an average citizen. This is one reason why Farhad Manjoo argued yesterday that we should just wait for the next day’s paper to come out, though I suspect that few who read this newsletter will feel as if they have that luxury. In short, social media seems to systematically amplify falsehood at the expense of the truth, and no one—neither experts nor politicians nor tech companies—knows how to reverse that trend. It is a dangerous moment for any system of government premised on a common public reality.
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In Sri Lanka, Facebook Contends With Shutdown After Mob Violence
Sri Lanka blocked access to the social network in an effort to stop mob violence directed at its Muslim minority, the Times reported: This week, the island country sought to block access to the social network, as well as two other platforms that Facebook owns, WhatsApp and Instagram, in an attempt to stem mob violence directed at its Muslim minority. Citing inflammatory posts on Facebook and WhatsApp, the Sri Lankan government ordered internet providers and mobile phone carriers on Wednesday to temporarily block the services along with Viber, another messaging app. “These platforms are banned because they were spreading hate speeches and amplifying them,” Harindra B. Dassanayake, a government spokesman, said in a phone interview on Thursday. Sri Lanka’s government has also imposed a nationwide state of emergency after violence broke out Sunday in one of the island’s central cities, where dozens of Muslim businesses, houses and at least one mosque were attacked. At least one person was killed.
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Meet the campaign connecting affluent techies with progressive candidates around the country
My colleague Sarah Jeong looks at how some Democrats are good-naturedly trolling one another on Twitter into backing progressive candidates nationwide: In the first quarter of 2018 alone, the Great Slate has raised over $140,000, primarily through word of mouth on the internet. The donors I spoke to seemed to give mostly in amounts of hundreds, sometimes less. A good chunk of that was driven by security researcher Thomas Ptacek’s promise to stop tweeting about Eric S. Raymond, a notorious figure in the open-source community whose bizarre and abundant ramblings on everything including race and sex could be considered early forerunners of current alt-right strains in the tech community. Raymond, popularly known as ESR, is a “philosophical leader of open source” who has long been pilloried for his controversial views — statements like “Gays experimented with unfettered promiscuity in the 1970s and got AIDS as a consequence” or “Police who react to a random black male behaving suspiciously who might be in the critical age range as though he is an near-imminent lethal threat, are being rational, not racist.” “I’ve been torturing Twitter with lurid Eric S. Raymond quotes for years,” says Thomas Ptacek. “Every time I do, 20 people beg me to stop.” So Ptacek held his followers hostage: pay up, or the ESR quotes would keep coming. It’s estimated that Ptacek has driven somewhere around $30,000, just by threatening to post eye-searing screencaps.
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Russian Trolls Tried to Torpedo Mitt Romney’s Shot at Secretary of State
A Journal analysis — which does not appear to have relied on the somewhat controversial Hamilton 68 dashboard — found that Russian social media bots targeted Romney: Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Russia-backed online “trolls” flooded social media to try to block Mitt Romney from securing a top job in the incoming administration, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The operatives called the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, then a contender for secretary of state, a “two headed snake” and a “globalist puppet,” promoted a rally outside Trump Tower and spread a petition to block Mr. Romney’s appointment to the top diplomatic job, according to a review of now-deleted social-media posts.
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Most major outlets have used Russian tweets as sources for partisan opinion: study
In a new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we look at how often, and in what context, Twitter accounts from the Internet Research Agency—a St. Petersburg-based organization directed by individuals with close ties to Vladimir Putin, and subject to Mueller’s scrutiny—successfully made their way from social media into respected journalistic media. We searched the content of 33 major American news outlets for references to the 100 most-retweeted accounts among those Twitter identified as controlled by the IRA, from the beginning of 2015 through September 2017. We found at least one tweet from an IRA account embedded in 32 of the 33 outlets—a total of 116 articles—including in articles published by institutions with longstanding reputations, like The Washington Post, NPR, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as in more recent, digitally native outlets such as BuzzFeed, Salon, and Mic (the outlet without IRA-linked tweets was Vice).
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Without Facebook, The West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Might Not Have Happened
Caroline O'Donovan finds a Facebook group being used for … good???? The West Virginia teachers’ strike ended after only nine days on Tuesday with a 5% raise for teachers across the state, and organizers say a private Facebook group was key to the swift and decisive victory. Two West Virginia teachers started the “West Virginia Public Employees United” Facebook group in the fall, hoping it would be a place to share concerns about cost increases to their healthcare plans that would have resulted in overall pay cuts. Over the last few months, the group — which workers can only join by invitation — shot up from a few hundred members to over 24,000. The state’s school system employs 35,000 people total. As the group grew, and tensions between public employees and the Republican-dominated West Virginia statehouse heightened, it became an organizational hub, meme factory, and the political engine that eventually led to tens of thousands of employees walking off the job.
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A judge may soon decide whether Trump must unblock people on Twitter
Hamza Shaban: Seven people who are suing President Trump after they were blocked from his popular @realDonaldTrump Twitter account will soon have their day in court, in a case that questions whether government officials can impede critics online. On Thursday, a federal judge in New York will hear arguments from a group of Twitter users — including a college professor and a police officer — who allege that the president violated their First Amendment rights. Trump blocked the users after they criticized him or his policies, sometimes using video clips and insults. The Knight First Amendment Institute, which is representing the seven plaintiffs, will argue that Trump’s Twitter account is a public forum, and that his actions violate the constitutional rights of the users. By blocking people because of their critical viewpoints, the plaintiffs are stripped of their ability to participate in that forum, according to the Knight Institute. What’s more, the plaintiffs argue, other Americans are denied the ability to read and engage with dissenting voices, effectively distorting the shape of public debate.
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The next social media hearings may be about gun violence
Lindsey Graham wants hearings about the real reason that guns kill people … social media! (If you want to make yourself crazy, here are Lindsay Graham’s positions on actual gun control, which include an ‘A’ rating from the NRA and opposition to banning high-capacity magazines): Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) says he’d like to grill America’s social media companies at a hearing about the way threats of gun violence, including against schools, spread online.
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Josh Hawley’s Missouri Senate Bid Could Be a Problem for Google
Bloomberg profiles Missouri’s Peter Thiel-backed attorney general: Hawley may have other motivations to take up a similar crusade in the U.S. On Feb. 27 the Missouri attorney general formally launched a campaign for the U.S. Senate. He’s running as the favorite to win the Republican nomination in what is arguably the most important race in the 2018 midterm elections. If he can unseat Claire McCaskill, a two-termer who is one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection, Republicans will likely maintain control of the Senate. In that case, Hawley would have a prominent platform to criticize Silicon Valley at a moment when the public has become much more skeptical of Big Tech. “We need to have a conversation in Missouri, and as a country, about the concentration of economic power,” he says. Lawyers on Hawley’s staff are still considering the evidence, and he says he’ll make a decision on whether to bring charges this summer—when his Senate campaign will be in full swing. A person familiar with the case says several other states are considering similar investigations. This would strengthen Hawley’s critique of Google and ensure that it remains in the national press.
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Twitter may eventually let anyone become verified
Jack Dorsey went on Periscope today to say that whatever your issue is, Twitter is working on it. The closest he came to details came with this line about the company’s arcane verification process, which is both “on hold” and actively being used to verify the Parkland student activists: “The intention is to open verification to everyone,” Dorsey says. “And to do it in a way that’s scalable, where [Twitter] is not in the way and people can verify more facts about themselves and we don’t have to be the judge or imply any bias on our part.” Dorsey didn’t elaborate further on what this process looks like, but other online communities, such as Airbnb, require users to submit a Facebook profile, phone number, email address, or a government-issued photo ID.
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Twitter says it will stop cryptocurrency scams by removing manipulative accounts
After BuzzFeed reported on widespread cryptocurrency scams on Twitter — and only after BuzzFeed’s reporting — Twitter says it is “proactively” working to fix the problem: Twitter is taking steps to reduce the amount of cryptocurrency scams on its platform. In recent weeks, a number of scammers on Twitter have impersonated Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Elon Musk, or John McAfee. They’ll use deceptive tactics like a slight misspelling of a username or use the same or similar avatar of the verified account, and tell followers to send them a small amount of currency to receive a bigger amount back. In a statement to The Verge, Twitter says it will begin taking down these types of accounts. “We’re aware of this form of manipulation and are proactively implementing a number of signals to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.”
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Twitter taps distinguished engineer Parag Agrawal as new CTO
Twitter has had a new chief technical officer since October but only updated its website to announce this fact today. But in fairness, my profile still list the number of Vine loops I have, so I’ll take progress where I can find it: Twitter on Thursday updated its website to reflect that it has appointed a new chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal. He takes the position most recently held by Adam Messinger, who left in late 2016. The appointment was announced internally in October, during a quarter when Twitter managed to produce a net profit for the first time. Meanwhile, Agrawal came to the top rungs of Twitter’s corporate leadership just before the company’s operating chief, Anthony Noto, announced that he would leave.
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Snap Confirms Layoffs Totaling 120 Engineers
Alex Heath has the memo from Snap’s Jerry Hunter. No real reason is given for why these 120 engineers will be “exited” from the company: Over the last few weeks I’ve worked closely with our key leaders to create a plan for restructuring our team to make it stronger. We kept a few important goals in mind: 1) We will unify the entire engineering organization as a single, powerful and diverse team that is highly productive, extremely innovative, and technically excellent. 2) We will organize around our key priorities, specifically, addressing the technical debt that we have accrued over the years so that we can develop a product that engages customers and drives Snap forward. 3) We will deploy an organizational structure that aligns top talent with the most critical priorities, creates clarity around our mission, drives accountability, and rewards technical excellence in product development.
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Student group protests Apple over “addictive devices”
This is wild: a campus protest of addictive devices — from 18-year-olds. This movement is not just a bunch of fussy parents lecturing their kids: Stanford Students Against Addictive Devices (SSAAD) staged a protest on Saturday outside of the Palo Alto Apple store on University Avenue. The student protesters claimed that Apple is failing to take steps to curb technology addiction. They also demanded that the company adjust software features to mitigate users’ constant focus on their devices. “We felt that this is the kind of change that a lot of consumers have to demand before Apple takes sustained action,” said Sanjay Kannan ’18. “We did some research into how prevalent the problem was, and we realized that 50 percent of teens are addicted to their phones, and 69 percent of [parents] check their phone hourly.”
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Oculus brings Rift VR headsets back to life with a software fix
New runtime new fun time: Oculus Rift owners discovered that their headsets had stopped working yesterday, thanks to an expired certificate. It appears Oculus forgot to renew its security certificate, causing part of the Rift app to crash and prevent access to its VR software. While temporary fixes involved setting a computer’s date to earlier in the week, Oculus is now issuing a software update to fix the problem.
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Snapchat finally adds @ mention tagging
The ephemeral-story copy machine works in reverse: Snapchat now lets you @-tag someone in your Story, creating a swipe up “more” option that shows the tagged person’s name, handle, Bitmoji, and an Add button so you can follow them too. The feature could let friends call each other out in Stories, or promote their favorite influencers by making it easy for people to follow them. It’s a case of Snapchat copying Instagram back after the Facebook-owned app added @ mentions to Stories back in November 2016, just a few months after Instagram cloned Snapchat’s whole Stories feature. Not all users appear to have access to tagging right now, but it seems like a sensible thing to roll out.
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Ben Grosser’s “Demetricator” will change how you think about Twitter and Facebook.
We wrote about the Demetricator, which strips engagement counters off of social media sites, here last week. Will Oremus likes it: Only when I tried it did I realize that my eyes were instinctively flicking to a tweet’s retweet and favorite counters before I even processed the tweet itself. Only when I tried Demetricator did I understand how much I relied on those signals to evaluate a tweet—not only its popularity or reach, but its value.
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The Vatican Hosts a Hackathon
Leaders at the Catholic Church organized VHacks to use technology to solve issues of social inclusion, interfaith dialogue, and resources for refugees, Wired reports: In his tenure, [Pope] Francis has embraced social media—he has 17 million Twitter followers and more than 5 million devotees on Instagram—and even spoke last year at TED, the conference famous for drawing flocks of thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists. But he’s also openly discussed the peril of technology. In his second encyclical, Laudato Si’, released in 2015, Francis directly addressed technology’s influence and implications in a lengthy chapter titled, “The roots of the ecological crisis.” In it, he asked that the church focus on the “dominant technocratic paradigm and the place of human beings and of human action in the world” and examine the globalization of that paradigm. Sounds like a fun time!
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Questions? Comments? Austin recommendations? casey@theverge.com
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