Making Sen$e May 17 Watch 7:44 Why we should be more like cats than dogs when it comes to social media Computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier doesn't mince words when it comes to social media. In his latest book, "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now," says the economic model is based on "sneaky manipulation."… By Paul Solman
Science May 16 Watch 11:04 Inside Facebook’s race to separate news from junk At Facebook, there are two competing goals: keep the platform free and open to a broad spectrum of ideas and opinions, while reducing the spread of misinformation. The company says it's not in the business of making editorial judgments, so… By Miles O'Brien
Science May 09 Watch 9:17 Why we love to like junk news that reaffirms our beliefs Facebook is exquisitely designed to feed our addiction to hyper-partisan content. In this world, fringe players who are apt to be more strident end up at the top of our news feeds, burying the middle ground. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien… By Miles O'Brien
Science May 02 Watch 9:52 Online anger is gold to this junk-news pioneer Meet one of the Internet's most prolific distributors of hyper-partisan fare. From California, Cyrus Massoumi caters to both liberals and conservatives, serving up political grist through various Facebook pages. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien profiles a leading purveyor of junk news… By Miles O'Brien
Apr 25 Watch 11:20 How Facebook’s news feed can be fooled into spreading misinformation By Miles O'Brien Facebook’s news feed algorithm learns in great detail what we like, and then strives to give us more of the same -- and it's that technology that can be taken advantage of to spread junk news like a virus. Science… Continue watching
Apr 25 What is the NewsTracker? By Cameron Hickey As the country was reacting to the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, concerns soared about the problems of misinformation or so-called “Fake News” spreading across social media. To understand the scale and shape of a problem that was incredibly… Continue reading
Oct 10 Google ‘Top stories’ featured false news about rumored Antifa civil war By Cameron Hickey, Miles O'Brien We reached out to Google to ask about the misinformation we found for the “Antifa civil war” search in “Top stories,” and they declined to comment. However, by the following day, searches for those same terms did not return any… Continue reading