Lies spread faster than the truth

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146

Soroush Vosoughi1, Deb Roy1, Sinan Aral2,*
Science 09 Mar 2018:
Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1146-1151

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Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.

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False political news (Fig. 1D) traveled deeper (Fig. 3A) and more broadly (Fig. 3C), reached more people (Fig. 3B), and was more viral than any other category of false information (Fig. 3D). False political news also diffused deeper more quickly (Fig. 3E) and reached more than 20,000 people nearly three times faster than all other types of false news reached 10,000 people

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