
People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds - arayh
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18174631/old-people-fake-news-facebook-share-nyu-princeton
======
dandare
Anecdotal evidence: I remember how my 65 years old dad changed from a large-
minded, world-traveling retired professor to an avid consumer of fake news in
the span of fewer than two years.

Yes, it was a shock, but most of all I am mortified that this could happen to
me as well when I get to his age.

~~~
dev_dull
Stay unplugged from social media and _especially_ mainstream media and you’ll
be just fine.

~~~
dandare
You mean "Don't trust mainstream media, watch this shocking video instead"?

~~~
nilkn
"Don't trust mainstream media" doesn't mean you have to turn to even more
untrustworthy sources, nor does it mean you can't ever go to mainstream
outlets for information. It just means you have to examine what you're told
critically and compare it across sources.

I had an epiphany in mid-November 2018. I realized that, despite watching and
reading the news on a pretty much daily basis, none of my voting decisions
were changing as a result. I examined voting decisions I'd made going back to
2016 and realized none of them were materially changed by watching the news
with such regularity and granularity. This isn't to say that I'm set in my
ways and never change my viewpoint. Rather, I think it's more a reflection on
the fact that political candidates don't tend to change much over short
periods of time, so after a certain point watching or reading the news will
simply reaffirm what you already know about them rather than introduce
fundamentally new information. A politician who had viewpoint X or trait Y
yesterday probably still has viewpoint X today or trait Y today; that may not
be true in 5 years, but I don't need to be plugged in every single day.

I realized I only really need to "check in" periodically and see if the voting
landscape has truly changed. When "checking in," I've found I have far less
allegiance to a particular source and am more open to checking several and
comparing. When you don't follow a particular source almost religiously and
only peek in once a week or once every two weeks, the "circus" nature of the
media starts becoming alarmingly apparent. The disparity between the calm of
real life and the 24/7 chaos and tragedy of the news becomes impossible to
ignore. My voting patterns have not changed as a result of my disengagement,
but my anxiety/outrage/uneasiness have all went down significantly. I now view
my previous habit of watching the media every day as a downright unhealthy
addiction.

~~~
k9s9
Yup Matt Taibbi has a good book calling the news media - Hate Inc. They spend
all their time stoking fears and amping peoples anxiety and threat perception,
all to maximize engagement - [https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-
fairway](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway)

------
sillyquiet
Like other commenters, this study jives with my experience with older
relatives. I mean 'forwards from grandma' has been a thing forever, right?

'Bill Gates will give a nickel every time this is read' (remember email
chains?), 'naked women get shared, but this heroic child won't get a single
like', 'Like and Share if you stand with politician X', etc etc.

Combine this with the targeted scamming of elderly from various Nigerian
princes and jailed grandchildren, and there does seem to be a much greater
degree of credulity with our current elderly generation. I think a more
interesting study would be to figure out whether it's generational, a function
of changing brain physiology as we age, or what.

~~~
hannob
> I mean 'forwards from grandma' has been a thing forever, right?

Let me tell you that grandma' with email is a relatively new phenomena.

~~~
bunderbunder
I started trading emails with my grandmother some time around 1990.

That's not literally forever, but, considering that it's longer than one or
two HNers have been alive, it's at least figuratively forever.

------
arayh
Study says that damage to the prefrontal cortex in older adults can increase
susceptibility to fraud and scams, which may be related to why older people
share more fake news.

[source]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971060/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971060/)

~~~
Eli_P
You can search for J. Rogan with Robert Sapolsky podcast where doc said that
either prefrontal or orbitofrontal cortex finishes developing at ~25 years
old, so brain can learn about environment and extrapolate accumulated
experience later throughout life. I think age bias is not appropriate, because
youngsters could consume propaganda with memes, feeds and games as well, just
through the different medium. What matters here is anxiety level and/or IQ.

~~~
arayh
Admittedly, there is definitely a precedent for youngsters who fall for fake
news. I am reminded that a number of under-65s thought they could charge their
iPhone in a household microwave, even though you would think that common sense
would dictate otherwise.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768976/Emergency-s...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2768976/Emergency-
services-forced-step-iPhone-users-fall-internet-prank-explains-use-microwave-
charge-phone.html)

------
Liquix
It makes sense - they grew up in a time where news was (relatively)
reliable/truthful, so perhaps don't have the same "this may not be true"
skepticism that younger generations have.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It makes sense - they grew up in a time where news was (relatively)
> reliable/truthful,

No, they grew up in a time when media distortion was less likely to be
revealed because the major media was narrower and it's ideological biases more
consistent, and voices outside the major media had major barriers to reaching
any substantial audience.

~~~
nabla9
Media distortion and truthfulness are not the same thing.

People and media will always have a viewpoint that distorts their objectivity.
That is just fact of live and not necessarily bad thing as long as it's honest
belief. Media used to be more reliable and truthful in the past with the
normal distortions that people had. Mainstream media is still like this. Their
problem is the lack of money and time that lowers their ability to do original
reporting and check facts. They are the victims of dishonest influencing, not
the originators. Fox News is the only major mainstream media source that has
completely turned news into dishonest influencing operation.

Today the distortions are the same but there is significant increase in
intentional influencing with data and arguments that those who propagate them
don't believe. Using the same talking point to argue for and against issues is
good example of this.

Shady figures like Christopher Blair just sit in their homes and push out
(non-mainstream viewpoints) disinformation they know is false.

~~~
mbostleman
>>Fox News is the only major mainstream media source that has completely
turned news into dishonest influencing operation.>>

To me, it's ideas like this that perpetuate the problem. It clings to the idea
that journalists and journalism - at least that which is sold via mainstream
media channels - are capable of some kind of pristine objectivity. They
aren't. It is much healthier in my opinion to understand that news is not
special within its medium. It's entertainment like everything on every other
channel. It's somewhat less fictional obviously, but the entertainment motive
is what lies behind it.

I would suggest instead that Fox News was the first major mainstream media
source that dropped the pretensions and openly did what "news" has been doing
since Walter Kronkite but with an equal and opposite bias. And to that extent,
it has had a beneficial effect on society: we now know to watch carefully what
a given journalist decides to report on and what they don't and we work harder
to extract facts, if there are any, from the pre-determined narratives they
are wrapped in. Whether purposely or not, they made news look like a joke. And
we are smarter now because of it.

~~~
asdff
Fox news doesn't correct their lies when exposed, they double down. Unlike any
other journalistic entity that isn't state run.

~~~
mbostleman
Which is to say that their peers don't correct their lies when not exposed.
Which is to say that the number of corrections is proportional to the number
of exposures. So Fox is just a pig among pigs in lipstick. I'll buy that, but
it doesn't really change my point.

~~~
asdff
Reputable publications correct their factual errors all the time. Reputable
publications also fire people who discredit journalism with their behavior.

------
jameslk
Here's the study since the article didn't link directly to it:
[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586)

~~~
tropo
Wow, that's bad.

The definition of "fake news" is a list of 21 conservative web sites chosen by
BuzzFeed. For some reason, BuzzFeed wasn't in that list.

Unsurprisingly, by that definition, fake news is primarily spread by
conservatives! Chart C shows that as the strongest result by far. Chart B,
going by age, is a weaker result. Well yes, it seems that conservatives live
longer (living less dangerously?) or that people turn conservative as they
age. It is well-known that older people lean conservative.

This study is, itself, impressively fake, just like BuzzFeed.

~~~
thecatspaw
Are you aware that buzzfeed actually has a pretty good news section too?

It doesnt pay well enough, so they also have the clickbait stuff

~~~
tropo
BuzzFeed is the site that spread the "piss dossier" nonsense. You can't get
much more fake than that without invoking aliens and Elvis.

~~~
wbronitsky
Are you referring to the dossier that a court found was in the public interest
to publish because it had so much merit? The same dossier that two presidents
were briefed on and was a subject of an active government investigation? That
dossier is now, provably, not fake. It seems like you might be unintentionally
spreading fake news yourself.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-
entertainment/2018/12/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-
entertainment/2018/12/20/public-has-right-know-buzzfeed-prevails-russian-tech-
moguls-steele-dossier-case/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.58305596bd56)

~~~
tropo
The existence of the dossier itself is provably not fake. The content however
is, along with the original story of how it came to be funded, created, and
disseminated.

It's not even plausible. The man is a germophobe. He had to overcome a
handshake aversion (Where has your hand been today? Eeeew...) to even run for
office.

It was trivial for the people in power to brief presidents or start a
government investigation, with or without merit, and this leads the court to
determine public interest. It's getting to be circular logic here, with merit
coming from merit.

~~~
wbronitsky
You're making straw man arguments without any proof or substance. Is there
anything, articles, quotes, even tweets, anything that shows that the Steel
Dossier is fake news? I'll admit that I thought it was unnecessary and
possibly fake at the outset, but the data changed my mind. A court ruling, the
news that two USA sitting Presidents were briefed on it, and the fact that the
people who continue to deny it tell provable lies on a daily basis is a pretty
strong set of data to counter the points you are making.

This leads me to the conclusion that you are either 1) uninterested in the
facts 2) making your arguments in bad faith or 3) all of the above

In any case, arguing with you will not bring further truth out. Enjoy your day

~~~
tropo
The burden of proof falls on those who want to believe the claims.

The fact that the dossier is notable (in the public interest to publish) does
not mean that the dossier is correct. The court only ruled that the dossier
was notable. The fact that presidents were briefed means that the dossier is
notable, not that it is correct. The bit about people telling lies... well
that is an _ad hominem_ that also doesn't help to satisfy the burden of proof,
plus if that were a valid argument then it could be applied to the source of
the dossier.

------
simulate
The elderly are generally more susceptible to internet fraud. Last summer the
New Yorker had this story about how an 85 year old was scammed out of her life
savings:

My Mother and Her Scammer [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-
history/my-mother...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-
mother-and-her-scammer)

~~~
TremendousJudge
Nigerian prince scams and the like are much older than the internet though.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-
fee_scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam)

------
ThomPete
This article is a perfect example of the incredibly sloppy and biased thinking
that happens in media and which is part of the very problem it talks about.

Fake news first and formost is a clickbait scam to get advertising dollars,
NOT a political propaganda approach and this tendency to keep using it as if
it's an actual political issue is really absurd and itself an example of what
is probably more an example of sloppy news.

Furthermore the insinuation that the older generation somehow is more naive
than the young generation in political views only adds to the superficial and
naval gazing claims.

~~~
WhompingWindows
You're not accounting for internal and external to the US attempts to
manipulate our democracy via social media. The IRA created fake accounts to
encourage tribalism and partisan thinking. It's not new for Americans or
companies as well, there's been manipulating the web with bots and
disinformation ourselves for years. To say it's purely clickbait is to ignore
a large amount of evidence that it's also politically motivated.

~~~
ThomPete
I didn't say it's purely clickbait I said it mostly clickbait which it is and
the reason why it's being used as much as it is.

------
sanmon3186
My hypothesis is that they grew with a notion that "if it is on a newspaper,
magazine or a book, it must be true", which was indeed the case when compared
to digital content in today's world.

It took me a long discussion to convince my Indian uncle that image of
certificate (signed by director general of UNESCO) that he forwarded on
WhatsApp, declaring Indian national anthem as the best national anthem in the
world, can be created in 10 minutes by anyone these days.

~~~
asdff
I think it is a little more nuanced. No one takes the tabloids at the grocery
store seriously, for instance, and they've been in print forever. But, you'd
trust a tabloid story your cousin sent you on facebook to check out. Suddenly
you trust that tabloid source since you trust your cousin.

------
danabrams
Overheard during the 2012 campaign in florida, between some octagenerians: I’m
voting for that Mitt Romney because he’s a nice Protestant boy, not like the
others. (Not that it matters, but Obama was the only Protestant in that race,
Biden and Ryan are catholic, Romney is like the most famous Mormon).

~~~
burfog
They may be aware of all that and still disagree.

Romney: technically, Mormons are protestant

Biden: he isn't a believable Catholic unless he opposes abortion

Obama: he actually slipped up and said "my Muslim faith" in an interview

------
zelon88
A almost guarantee that 100% of the people who believe clickbait fake news
articles from bogus and untrustworthy sources also have never heard of the
scientific method.

I believe that many older people find critical thinking to be taboo, and
prefer to take things at face value because they confuse passivity with
wisdom. Why question something when someone will come along any minute to make
you feel comfortable anyway?

They tend to be wrong when they think independently because they were never
any good at critical thinking to begin with, so they just parrot what they
were told makes sense. What's going to keep their lives "the same."

This article does a better job than I ever could explaining my reasoning...
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014616721243921...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167212439213)

~~~
vinbreau
My mother taught me to be autodidact. She would never answer my questions and
instead told me to go get an encyclopedia (It was the 70's) and find out
myself. When I spouted ignorance she would correct me.

Now she's widowed. As my father declined with Alzheimer's he tuned into FOX
news all day long. Oddly, he became less racist despite this because my wife
is black. The more he fell in love with her as his daughter, the better person
he became.

My mom still watches FOX news all day long. I know this because my son is
living with her right now to help her out and he tells me outrageous stuff she
does with her ideas and money. She's a devout Republican now. She hated the
Obamas but could never tell me why. She loves Trump, but again she can't tell
me why other than she "Likes the way he talks."

Any evidence of truth given to her elicits an "OK" and then she walks away. I
have no idea how she went from "always look up the answer for yourself" to
believing anything that fits her current worldview as shaped by the television
she watches.

~~~
michaelchisari
"The Brainwashing Of My Dad" is a very personal documentary about this effect
on the director's father.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh3TeTxgNVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh3TeTxgNVo)

~~~
TheOperator
I found the documentarian to be more interesting than her subject which was an
old white man listening to talk radio that appeals to old white men and
agreeing with it. Her old man is just very agreeable having gone from the left
to the right to the center seemingly just parroting the news source he's
listening to at the time.

The documentarian on the other hand appears to have never listened to Rush
Limbaugh before setting out to do this documentary since she knows so little
that's non-controversial about the man. Such as his quirk of saying ditto. She
seems ro have just decided who he was by osmosis by reading left wing news
articles about him. Rather than try to genuinely understand the appeal of
right wing radio she just dismisses it as naziesque brainwashing. The way she
belittles her father while not appreciating the narrow range of political
thought she has exposed herself to is just so incredibly smug and oblivious.

This documentary in a nutshell is what is wrong with political discourse.

------
creaghpatr
Then again, people older than 65 share the most stuff period, if my relatives
are any indication.

~~~
pimmen
Age was apparently a better predictor than total number of links shared,
according to the article.

~~~
yorwba
Maybe older people share disproportionately more _news_ content? I tried to
look at the study to find out what kind of links they even included in the
evaluation, but the link in TFA only goes to the publication's home page.

Edit: it's here
[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586)

Edit': as I thought, their dataset includes all kinds of links, but they do
the same analysis for sharing hard news and don't find significant age
effects. It's table S14 in the supplementary material
[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/01/07/5.1....](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/01/07/5.1.eaau4586.DC1)

------
infradig
A day after an article about fake-news research being retracted and here are
people commenting enthusiasticly and gullibly about another piece of fake-news
research being promulgated. It's like no one has heard of the social sciences
reproducibility crisis. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

~~~
porpoisely
No less from theverge. It's amazing that people take theverge seriously after
their "how to build a pc" fiasco.

The one thing about the "fake news" hysteria is that one side consuming the
fake news is accusing the other side consuming the fake news.

As far as I can tell, it's all fake news and propaganda.

~~~
bmer
Donald Trump's presidency is weird because the "mainstream media" (a term used
by many, regardless of their political spectrum) began to be treated as "real
news" simply because Donald Trump was calling it "fake news".

People have been talking about the issues with the "mainstream media" (in
particular, whether their profit motives line up with their ethical duty) for
a few decades, and it all it takes is one clown to suddenly restore faith in
the media?

I have seen people talk about Bush like he was an okay president. It feels
like many have forgotten about the responsibility of the media in promulgating
the Iraq war narrative. People don't really seem to get the media actually
continues to profit from its interaction with Donald Trump (those sweet, juicy
views!), and continues to pass on useless information to the public, rather
than actionable information which might stir the public into something other
than apathy.

...something is so weird, and I am struggling to put my finger on it...

------
mcculley
It makes sense that people who discovered the Internet through Facebook and
Twitter at a later age would be more susceptible to memes.

I have been wondering if this will get better or worse. Once all Internet
users have been using it since a very early age, will they be more skeptical
and responsible? Or will they be more easily influenced?

I have been wondering what an elementary school course in memetics and
evolutionary psychology should look like. Kids need memetic inoculation, not
just to protect from fake news, but all kinds of automated marketing.

~~~
maldusiecle
You don't need knowledge of evo-psych or "memetics" (whatever that means) to
distinguish most sketchy sites from reputable ones. It may be tricky to
distinguish more carefully-assembled fake news sites, but most of these bogus
websites/Facebook groups are easy to pick out via stylistic cues alone.

~~~
ben_w
I think it’s unwise to rely on the incompetence of fake news websites.

Compare two UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Mail. They are both
well-known and have popular domains which have been around for ages.
Considering only their contradictions on the topic of Brexit, one of them
_must_ be about as dangerously out of touch with reality as it is possible to
be. Which one?

I know which one I believe, but I am not a lawyer, a trade negotiator, or a
politician.

~~~
maldusiecle
If you can't tell the difference between The Daily Mail and The Guardian based
on stylistic cues, I don't know what to tell you.

It is true that stylistic cues won't tell you everything. The rest,
unfortunately, is a lot harder to teach. Avoiding the obviously-shoddy sites
is sufficient as a start; the rest is really going to be dependent on
particular knowledge in areas like science, history, etc.

EDIT: Kinda surprised at the downvotes I'm getting here. Have you _looked_ at
the Daily Mail frontpage?

~~~
ben_w
> If you can't tell the difference between The Daily Mail and The Guardian
> based on stylistic cues, I don't know what to tell you.

Then you missed my point. Of course I can tell the _difference_ , but which
one is _true_ — the one founded in 1821 or the one founded in 1896?

~~~
maldusiecle
Don't look at the founding date, that's completely irrelevant. Look at the
Daily Mail homepage. Does it look like a news site, or does it look like a
tabloid?

~~~
BeetleB
>Does it look like a news site, or does it look like a tabloid?

I think you've just demonstrated why many people believe fake news. A lot of
them are set up to look like regular news sites.

Fake news sites have been around for a lot longer than people think. I
remember quite a few years ago reading an article about an event where some
minority Christians were being mistreated in some non-Christian country. It
looked like any other news article. The incident in question was reported in
multiple news sites.

Then one person (or a team?) exposed it all. The event never happened. It was
not obvious, and he/they had to do a lot of sleuthing to find out who owned
the sites - a Christian advocacy group. All the other sites reporting on the
incident were likewise (perhaps all under the same company - can't remember).

Years before 2016.

The only thing that may have clued me into it being fake news was that I
hadn't heard of the news site. But then again, most people have not heard of
most news sites.

Don't look at style or appearances. Really. Don't.

Oh, and as bad as The Daily Mail is, it is full of accurate (albeit
misleading) material - compared to a typical tabloid in the US. I can easily
dismiss nonsense I see on tabloids in the grocery store. With The Daily Mail,
I have to _work_ to find out if it is true or not.

~~~
maldusiecle
> I think you've just demonstrated why many people believe fake news. A lot of
> them are set up to look like regular news sites.

You're reading my argument backwards. I'm not saying you should trust any
website that looks reputable. I'm saying you should _distrust_ any site that
looks _disreputable_. That's the first step, and it's a huge improvement over
trusting everything (which is what most people who buy these fake news sites
do).

------
babyslothzoo
I find it interesting that many people, especially boomers, can go to the
grocery store and recognize checkout tabloids as obvious hoaxes, yet they
stumble into something much more ridiculous online and determine it to be
true.

They seem particularly susceptible to confirmation bias in propaganda memes
and literal fake news.

~~~
Nasrudith
I think part of it is learning "everyone knows" that Tabloids are all "batboy
was impregnated by bigfoot". It doesn't require any critical thinking.

Yet they fall for it because it wasn't socially embedded as "obviously fake"
to them. Not to mention that sadly most people are very vulnerable to flattery
of their beliefs (see the infamous Sokal Hoax).

------
grigjd3
I wonder how much of this is having free time and a lack of mobility.

------
undecisive
Their conclusions don't excite me, and theorising about the reasons doesn't
help. I'd like to see a few comparison studies showing the bell curves by:

\- age

\- IQ

\- reading speed

\- concentration

\- bias

\- activism

\- non-social-media surfing time

For example, the people I would expect to see rank highly for fake news
sharing:

\- a person with low reading speed and either a significant bias towards the
conclusion or low concentration

\- a low-iq non-activist (less likely to have read up on the subject)

\- a person who only surfs social media

Of course, between these categories the data will have its own correlations
(age + low eyesight, iq + surfing patterns, etc) and so I'd want to see the
data both with and without correcting for those correlations too.

I don't know how surprising this data would be - once all the correlations are
corrected for, I imagine the graph would look pretty flat.

------
lordnacho
It's not _digital_ literacy, it's literacy.

Older people grew up believing in religion, in fact they could be beaten
mercilessly if they expressed doubt.

They also grew up during one of the most intense ideological struggles in
political history.

And on top of that they were the first generation exposed to mass media, in an
era where there were still relatively few alternative information sources.

Basically they were ill prepared to think critically, and still are.

Sorry. I love my dad but he came out a Putin fan a while back. He also thought
he'd won the lottery which he'd never entered.

~~~
12elephant
So, does being a Putin fan imply one has 'gone off the deep end'?

~~~
lordnacho
It does if you're also in exile from your birthplace due to it having become
an authoritarian state.

~~~
12elephant
Maybe some people just prefer the authoritarian model.

It is not an objective truth that non-authoritarianism > authoritarianism.
That's just, like, an opinion, man.

Further: when has Russia not been an authoritarian state?

~~~
lordnacho
Point is if you like authoritarian, why would you leave paradise?

> It is not an objective truth that non-authoritarianism > authoritarianism.
> That's just, like, an opinion, man.

Shakespeare > Marlowe is just an opinion.

------
rchaud
Not at all a surprise.

The first time my dad used the Internet to look at used car ads on Craigslist,
I found him trying to fight off a cascading series of popups (this was in the
mid-2000s) that launched when he clicked the "You are our 1 millionth
customer" ads.

Older people who are new to the Internet may simply think it's regulated like
TV and Radio commercials are. Couple that with how easy it is to target these
demographics using an FB/Twitter advertiser account, and how they make up big
chunks of the voting bloc, and you have a recipe for disaster.

~~~
ideonexus
This reminds me of when my father-in-law got a fullscreen pop-up claiming to
have seized his computer unless he paid $20. While I was looking at it to
figure out how to close the window, he said, "I've already paid them twice
now!!!"

~~~
b_t_s
It's a failure to understand how any of it actually works. There was a comment
higher up how many older people have memorized steps to complete tasks, but
have no understanding of underlying concepts. Despite 2 decades of effort on
my part, my father has paper notebooks full of step by step instructions how
to do things with his computer, but not a shred of understanding of any of the
underlying concepts. Also, he was shocked to learn that the internet runs on
money and advertising. He can do about 5 common tasks on it, and he has strict
instructions never to enter any personal or financial information into any
computer.

------
threatofrain
There’s probably more money scaring old people about dying and buying pills.

When you compare to Fox health and sciences section, their political news
looks reasonable. The scaring old people industry must be regulated.

------
sailfast
"Article with headline "makes sense" to my worldview and fits with my
stereotyped understanding of elderly people so everyone piles on to comment"

Congratulations. We just did the same thing this article purports most people
over 65 do most of the time.

This study was comprised of people sharing their Facebook profile data with a
research company. I wonder what their disclaimers said when they clicked
"Yes"?

> “When we bring up the age finding, a lot of people say, ‘oh yeah, that’s
> obvious,’” co-author Andrew Guess, a political scientist at Princeton
> University, told The Verge. “For me, what is pretty striking is that the
> relationship holds even when you control for party affiliation or ideology.
> The fact that it’s independent of these other traits is pretty surprising to
> me. It’s not just being driven by older people being more conservative.”

Was his going-in hypothesis that older people are more conservative? Or that
hoaxes only target conservatives?

I am not saying the entire study is BS, merely that everyone saying "haha yeah
it must be that 65+ don't have good BS detectors because they watched Ed
Murrow on TV" may not have employed their own detector 100% when reading this
article.

------
ChicagoBoy11
It has really upset me to see my father, an accomplished businessman,
constantly share with me videos/news and ask questions based on information
that is obviously false. I never would have believed it if you had described
it to me, but for some reason the social component adds an element that gives
these stories a lot more legs than they'd otherwise have

------
tonymet
Only 38% opted in, which was only ~1100 people. Moreover, the group of "older"
people spread at a rate of only 11%, which was lower than other cohorts (I
won't mention which).

Finally, only 8.5 percent actually spread fake news, so this whole study is
about about 95 people and how they spread news.

Other commenters mention that the domain list is also suspicious.

Clickbait science

~~~
el_cujo
People are increasingly aware of fake news now and I really hope this spreads
further into scrutiny on science, especially news articles about science. You
really need to dig deep into the methods of a study so you can understand all
of the caveats that go with its conclusions, but obviously a "news" article on
a finding is going to gloss over most of that and crystallize the entire paper
into one click bait sentence.

------
drewmol
For a lot of those 65+ they remember when an article that claimed: 'If you
________________* then share this with 10 of your friends ' would have cost
them 10 quarters and taken several days of effort to comply.

They know the free postage won't last forever, so they'll use it while it
lasts.

------
Aromasin
While this is complete conjecture, I don't think the ability to ascertain
truth from falsehood is uniquely age related; I believe it comes down to the
age of media you were raised in. That's not to say it age doesn't play a
factor at all, as cognitive function does decline as you get older.
Unfortunately we don't have the data to control for generational changes, so
'older people' and 'the current older generation' are used synonymously. In my
opinion, younger generations have become better accustomed to the bombardment
of lies, in the form of new age marketing, that older generations didn't have
growing up (at least, weren't as acutely aware of). That is compounded with
the fact that people become more trusting of their chosen form of media over
time [1]. If you've grown up with a small amount of media to choose from, and
develop a loyalty to a certain one, it's a hard cycle to break out of.

Anecdotally, it seems to me that the older people I know only consume
information from 1-3 sources, whereas younger people tend to flip-flop between
many different ones. So if any of that small pool of media sources becomes
untrustworthy it 'poisons the water', so to speak, much quicker.

To add to this, modern forms of media often have instant feedback mechanics
(article comments, suggested counter-articles, up-vote/down-vote functions
etc.) that can control fake news to a small extent. If someone shares fake
news on HN for example, I can read the discussion and be made aware of any
falsehood in the article. Traditional paper and television media does not have
this control mechanism. Take note, I'd argue that this argument shouldn't
apply to Facebook (which happens to be the most used website for over 50's).
Their algorithm favours popularity over anything else so even if people react
negatively to it (angry react), it only serves to spread fake news further.

[1]
[https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/...](https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-
research/generations-trust/)

~~~
bilbo0s
> _I don 't think the ability to ascertain truth from falsehood is uniquely
> age related; I believe it comes down to the age of media you were raised
> in..._

I don't know man?

I think it has a whole lot more to do with the common sense of the individual.
If you're the type of person who will believe that the US never landed on the
moon, or that Hillary, congresspeople and bankers are sexually molesting
children who are held captive in the basement of a pizzeria, then there's not
much that changing a media source is gonna do for you.

~~~
pixl97
>congresspeople and bankers are sexually molesting children who are held
captive in the basement of a pizzeria, then there's not much that changing a
media source is gonna do for you.

Let's adjust that a little bit.

Movie producers are sexually molesting children and women, and the police are
helping covering up and not investigating it, for decades.

~~~
bilbo0s
...in the basement of a pizzeria?

A story like that would make sense to you?

~~~
burfog
Having seen some of Podesta's emails, it seems likely that the pizzeria is a
codeword for some other location.

Normal people don't rent specific numbers of pizza slices by the hour.

------
ryanmetz
Discerning whether a story is fake or not is a cognitive task. Many people
over the age of 65 are in some stage of cognitive decline. It should not be
surprising to anyone that they would score more poorly than young adults.

------
oldmancoyote
One would think from this title that I share more fake news than younger
people. I'm 72. I don't share news at all.

What is "more fake news"? Is it that some individuals share more fake news
than others or more individuals share at least some fake news?

I'm sure a better title could be composed.

One would think from these comments that younger people don't share fake news.
There is a reason the words 'naive" and "youth" are often associated with each
other. Youth trying to evaluate/judge older people is, in a word, naive
itself.

------
nnain
Given the increased hostility between religion due to inflammatory social
media posts -- I wonder if things are harsher now, or whether these sentiments
were always there and facebook just made it easier for people to say things!
Maybe, in a way, it's ok that people have shown what they truly believed in,
and so our understanding of people's true belief's has been expedited.

------
burtonator
I've been thinking of building a 'fake news' app to embarrass people like this
who share fake news.

The idea is to have a legitimate looking site.

The link would be something like 'thebostonreporter.com' where it looks like a
real news URL and the content ALSO looks like a legitimate news site.

The site would create news stories that confirm the bias of people who tend to
share fake news.

For example, "Hillary Clinton Convicted of Money Laundering in Boston Court"
or something like that...

Then we push it on social media.

Once the links has gone out and has been distributed across social media we
flip the content of the link and say, basically:

"You've been the victim of fake news!"

and explain what they did wrong and how to be more critical of links they
share.

PART of this is going to have to be to shame them.

Another part is to make it clear that the next link they share MIGHT be
another "fake news time bomb" that could revert and embarrass them again -
hopefully making them reconsider sharing fake links in the future.

~~~
snarf21
This is a very interesting idea. This approach is similar to one the SEC did
with ICOs to combat all the scam and fraud happening.

I'm not sure how you determine when to do the flip. You would need a certain
amount of people to see the fake news but these things cycle really quickly.
If you wait one day, it may be too late as all that user's followers already
saw the fake news and have moved on. I wonder if you could do a logarithmic
decay for the fake new to shame page where there is an increasing percentage
of people who get the "you've been had" page.

You'd also have to be very careful to not run afoul of libel. You'll need lots
of "a well-informed source..." and lots of "may" and "might" and "is expected
to" language.

------
cmsonger
Fortunately they tend to be retired so there is less impact to their lives to
go vote on a Tuesday in the middle of the work week. Wait. What? Ha!

------
hnruss
Also from the article:

"Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who
identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared
links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats."

~~~
russdill
Did they bother controlling for political affiliation? People 65 and older are
much more likely to be Republicans.

------
yaya69
Who shares the most real news?

~~~
asdff
Reputable institutions, not cousin Cathy.

------
president
Seems like this could be solved by issuing large fines for publishing fake
articles. There obviously needs to be more regulation on news agencies or
companies that put out all this disinformation.

------
wybiral
Elderly people are frequently the target of scams.

I'm curious what the age statistics for people who clicked on Nigerian Prince
scams and viagra spam were like before social media.

~~~
anovikov
What's wrong about the viagra spam? Did it actually scam people out of
anything? I thought these were the actual e-shops selling actual (generic and
probably of dubious quality) stuff, just did it in an overly pushy way because
of oversaturated market.

------
garfieldnate
This is not news! There's a certain brand of conservative baby boomers in the
US who are obsessed with upsetting news, and they are extremely vulnerable to
fake news. Long before this whole "fake news" thing on social media came to
the popular consciousness, I was already getting e-mails about the Clintons
being part of an assassination plot or a certain breed of poisonous spiders
living in the toilet waiting to bite your butt and kill you. I called these
"old person emails" because only baby boomers would send them. It's the reason
we have snopes.com. Unfortunately I sent one of the snopes articles back in a
response to one of these "old person emails", and the response I got was,
"snopes is a liberal site!". In the US, the people from this generation grew
up fearing death by nuclear attack by communists at any moment. Even though
the world has changed pretty extremely since they were young, I think the
psychological effect of it never wore off for some people. Unfortunately, I
find Donald Trump to be the worst possible example of this type of
personality: he's always angry, he refuses to believe news that doesn't fit
his angry world view, and he says everything out loud that every angry baby
boomer has always dreamt they could say out loud (thus many people see him as
bold, not rude).

------
bkfh
When I was young, I was told to not believe everything on TV. Now I tell my
parents not to believe everything on the internet

------
aussieguy1234
This research will make it easier for purveyors of fake news to target those
who are more likely to fall for it.

------
adrianlmm
And people younger than 30 created them.

~~~
asdff
Yup, at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersberg!

------
raarts
How is fake news defined? So many things people disagree with are called fake
news these days.

------
protomyth
My Dad (mid 70s in age) shares the fake news articles because he thinks they
are funny. He still cannot believe that people take so much of this crap
seriously. Of course, when you have an elected representative that thinks an
island will tip over if you put too many people on it, its not hard to
understand where critical thinking has failed.

~~~
deadmik3
I've been realizing more and more as I grow up that many of the old people I
thought were retarded are actually playing dumb and punking me hard into
getting trolled by their shenanigans, making me the retarded one

~~~
protomyth
He's not playing dumb or trying to punk anyone. He thinks these people are
idiots and wants to share the stupid so we all can get a laugh. He's not
spreading it for you to believe it. Its like the old Weekly World News that
got bought and left in the diner. Its so absurd that its funny to read. I
still think I have the article where the North Dakota governor sent a hit team
to kill the devil. Most of the fake news these days is just as stupid.

------
Buldak
The researchers found that Republicans shared more fake news than Democrats,
but they suggest that is only because recent fake news has been largely
directed to support Trump (i.e. that age-susceptibility to fake news is
otherwise ideologically neutral). If it turned out that conservatives as such
are more susceptible to fake news, though, that might help explain why the
elderly are more susceptible insofar as old people tend to be conservative.

------
malvosenior
It depends on how you define fake news. I see most of what I'd consider fake
news being shared by people under the age of 40. I'd classify most of The
Verge articles as "fake news" for instance. They're politically charged
clickbait/outragebait often with undisclosed relationships between the authors
and subjects.

------
_pmf_
If you conveniently define conservative viewpoints as fake news, then yes.

------
anticensor
For they are underexcited.

------
btbuildem
Having spent Christmas back home, I've come to the conclusion that people over
65 should not have the right to vote.

You've had almost forty years of voting, you don't really have any future
left, and your minds aren't what they used to be. Please stay out of it.

~~~
magduf
I'm not sure this is fair to all people over 65. It sounds like maybe your
relatives are much like mine, and I agree, my relatives shouldn't be voting
either.

If we're going to put up a discriminatory barrier to voting, I think it'd be
more effective if it was education-based. People with no education make poor
voting choices, as we've seen in recent elections.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
It's quite frightening to see how popular this education barrier to voting
idea is. Another one I've heard is that everyone should make a test before
being allowed to vote.

~~~
howard941
I'm inclined to support educational qualifications for elections supervisors
and poll workers, not voters, and while we're there, forcing open source/open
inspection ballot counting systems. Isn't it long past time to deal with the
ineptitude problem and corrupt canvassing at the source?

------
PaulHoule
I think people older than age 65 are more interested in "news" period.

Older people also vote so they are worth targeting, particularly by right-wing
organizations that would like to mobilize them.

~~~
sametmax
And since they are the ones with the least experience with the internet and
the smaller capacity to adapt/learn/sort a lot of info, the whole thing make
sense.

~~~
PaulHoule
Some oldsters have been using the internet since before there was a world wide
web so they may have more experience than youngsters. Some of them have been
sharing memes on AOL since before some HN readers were born.

So far as cognitive capacity, I don't know. I've seen young people refuse to
learn from other people's mistakes, take deadly risks, etc.

When it comes to the epistemology of these people the right way to think about
it is the emotional gain they get out of the whole thing. That has nothing to
do with the internet. Listen to the Rush Limbaugh show this afternoon and
you'll realize that anyone who gets a kick out of that will be vulnerable to a
particular strain of "false news".

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have been degrading the American political
environment since Bill Clinton got elected, but it was only in 2016 that it
became a monster that the Republican establishment could not control in the
US. (And the center-right elsewhere)

~~~
sametmax
Go to a school and an old folks house. Ask them to create an instagram
account, take a picture, crop it, and post it online.

Would you really try to defend the point of view that the kids wouldn't do
much better ?

~~~
PaulHoule
That's instagram, which does lean young.

My aunt Lucy in a nursing home has a phone and thinks that Facebook is the
bee's knees -- she can keep up with what her family is up to.

I get many "This email was sent with an iPhone" messages from oldsters.
Nothing gets talked about in breathless tones in the New York Times (e.g.
Apple products) unless it appeals to the 50+ set. Note how "fall detection" is
a selling point of the new iWatch.

If you'd been around long enough you'd notice that selling things to oldsters
based on recapturing their youth or vicariously enjoying the youth of
youngsters has been a big business for a long time. It had a lot to do with
how baby boomers were celebrated in the 1960s (e.g. hippies did not read the
New York Times, but oldsters did) Eventually boomers became the target
audience and the breathless talk was about millennials.

Gen X got skipped mercifully because there were too few of us to move the
needle.

~~~
sametmax
Instagram is just an example. Make them them film a video and share it. Order
a Uber or a delivroo. Drive with waze. Book their train/plan ticket. Search
for an amazon product.

Sure, some 65+ people manage. Some.

Most people under 40 manage, and more.

------
bananatron
#shocked

------
the_other_guy
>what is fake news? the news I don't like or I don't want to hear

this is how pathetic our generation is

------
pimmen
And they are more likely to vote than young people. We really have to work to
make elderly people more digitally literate and young people more involved in
politics, I reckon it will require the removal of multiple barriers (like, oh
I don't know, not having the election on a weekday that makes no difference
for retired people but all the difference in the world to minimum wage
employees living pay check to pay check? And make it harder for ISPs to screw
over rural people?).

~~~
RightMillennial
Aren't employers legally required to give you time off to vote? In roughly
half of the states it's paid time off as well.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Aren't employers legally required to give you time off to vote?

Only 30 states require this (no federal requirement exists), and not all of
them required _paid_ time off to vote.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/can-i-leave-work-early-to-
vo...](https://www.businessinsider.com/can-i-leave-work-early-to-vote-2016-11)

------
asabjorn
Does anyone have a link to the source used to classify some news as fake and
other news as real in this paper? Whomever control that definition can shift
any conclusion, similarly to how hate speech definitions is used to silence
speech on platforms such as Patreon [3].

I think we should treat any conclusion made by YouGov with caution because on
at least on one occasion YouGov associated themselves with people believing in
and adovocating for social justice [1], so maybe they are part of the ongoing
effort [2] to re-gain progressive information gateway control in a world where
much information dissemination is shifted from traditional media to social
networks and streaming.

[1] [https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-
content/up...](https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/YouGov_CSJ_Polling-Results_2018.pdf)

[2] [https://www.changetheterms.org/](https://www.changetheterms.org/)

[3] [https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-
platfor...](https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-platform-
defends-itself-amid-boycott-2018-12)

~~~
soundwave106
In the above news article, there is a direct link to the magazine with the
study. The direct link to the study is here:
[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586)

The study appeared to correlate two sources to determine the nature of fake
news:

A) The primary source was a list of fake news sites compiled by Buzzfeed
Media: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-
fa...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fake-
election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook)

B) The study was cross-checked with a list of sites from a peer reviewed paper
(H. Allcott, M. Gentzkow, Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. J.
Econ. Perspect. 31, 211–236 (2017)) and according to the paper was similar.

There is some additional methodology in the study link.

~~~
asabjorn
Thanks! Buzfeed believes in far-left progressive views and is not known for
objective reporting, so using this as a primary source for classifications of
fake news would predetermine this outcome.

With this in mind I think we can't trust the studys conclusion.

~~~
fzeroracer
Why don't you address the actual study instead of disregarding it on a
partisan basis?

~~~
asabjorn
To show that the classification system used as a premise for the study has
problems is addressing the methodology of the study, and exactly what I
learned in my scientific training.

The fact that the classifications are likely to be politically biased due to
them being made by buzzfeed does not make the statement of that fact
necessarily political.

