

Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook - rajbala
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/525616/data-mining-reveals-how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-on-facebook/

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bertil
Week-old article, good insight; very relevant in Italy were Beppe Grillo uses
social media like a wild-fire -- and has failed to deliver change quite
dramatically.

Shame that there isn’t more on the social class (age, gender, occupation,
family situation, and position on the social graph) of that more sensitive
population.

Reminds me of Duncan Watts metaphor: You don't estimate the size of a forest
fire by the size of the match…

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dm2
In my opinion everyone should always be skeptical but they should not blindly
defend a claim without proper sources and sufficient evidence.

I've been called a conspiracy theorist before and it's not a nice feeling
since that phrase has such a negative connotation and is often associated with
crazy people.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories)

I'm surprised that there are not more listed for the CIA and other
paramilitary organizations, they've done some crazy stuff over the past 60
years.

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easy_rider
Wow didn't know MIT was a pawn in the COINTELPRO.

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explorigin
One of the axis is labelled "PDF" without an explanation for what that is. Did
they just need a random graphic? Is this a Lisa Holst article?

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TrainedMonkey
From original paper[0]:

Figure 2. Post lifetime/Probability density function, grouped by page type, of
the temporal distance between the first and last comments of the post. Posts
with qualitatively different topics (alternative information, political
activism, and main stream news) show a similar behavior.

[0] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3344](http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.3344)

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explorigin
Thanks. My spouse tells me I'm bad at finding things too.

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TrainedMonkey
You found a wife, so that can't be unconditionally true :P.

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calebm
This report is probably put out by some secret organization. It's part of the
conspiracy!

