Conservatives Bombarded With Facebook Misinformation Far More Than Liberals In 2020 Election, Study Suggests::Misinformation thrived in conservative echo chambers—but there were no liberal equivalents, according to the findings.

  • Hypersapien@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The reason is simple. Misinformation sticks with conservatives more than liberals. With liberals, someone posts evidence that the story isn’t true and the whole thing fizzles out. If someone tries posting counter evidence in a conservative forum, they get banned.

    There’s no money in trying to push misinformation to liberals.

    • Peanut@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      i would note that nothing is without nuance. while nowhere near comparable, there are some liberals that are also new-age hippies. (B.C. canada) that aren’t 100% on their fact checking.

      but that’s unavoidable in any group that is large and diverse enough.

      i think it’s a cultural mentality that discourages critical thinking which leads to most conservative ideology to begin with.

      • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You’re right. The Far-Left has the same problem. Pretty much any anti-establishment group falls into this. Difference is, the far-left has no political power and they don’t want to exterminate people.

    • prey169@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I can’t say this is true. I feel like liberal echo chambers tend to be far more punishing for those who disagree. Where most conservatives I know will try to have a healthier discussion

      • Cleverdawny@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No, he’s right. It’s not a matter of opinion, either, study after study shows that conservatives are far more accepting of misinformation and far more likely to spread it.

        In my experience, they’re also far less tolerant of dissenting views. I mean, they’re the kings of culture war boycotts and cancel crusades, moral panics, and their latest thing is to call anyone who steps outside of their sexuality box a pedophile.

      • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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        1 year ago

        It depends. What I’ve seen of conservatives trying to debate in leftist circles is typically presenting blatantly obvious misinformation as an “opinion” and then going shocked pikachu when they get banned for misinformation/debating in bad faith. The tone between the two sides is typically vastly different: conservatives tend to argue in a very assertive and authoritative tone whereas liberals tend to be nuanced.

        • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s been ten years since I’ve last had a good faith discussion with someone across the isle and it’s not me. Part of that is those who i used to discuss have somewhat distanced themselves from that ideology after 2016, but every topic otherwise devolves into some insane talking point devout of reality. You can’t debate someone who will no agree on simple facts.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s part of the problem that intellectual weaklings consider it “punishment” for their opinions to be destroyed with facts and evidence. You’re right that a conservative board is much more likely to be a fertile ground for endlessly entertaining fringe views, but you’re wrong that this is “healthy.”

      • phillaholic@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yea sure. If the topic is how the earth is flat, Jews run the world, or other conspiracy theory or white supremacists bullshit I’m going to shut that shit down immediately. If you make good faith arguments it’s fair game.

      • PsychedSy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t really tiptoe around conservative coworkers or friends even when we disagree heavily. With some of my left friends I have to be careful, but most of them are willing to have honest conversations. There’s a very narrow band on both sides that are willing to have a conversation and the best approach is often different. It could be how you communicate or personal biases. Never really know.

  • yata@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    There isn’t any Republican propaganda which isn’t misinformation at best (the rest being disinformation).

    • Callie@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Definitely. Republicans have been propaganda throughout history. The red scare, commies, patriotism pushes, their push against gay people in the 60-80s and now China.

      They always need to push an enemy to the forefront so people will focus on that instead of how much the citizens are getting fucked by them

  • kemsat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s because liberals are better at identifying misinformation. Pretty simple & straightforward.

  • icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    In other news wather is wet.

    Been seing lots of ralying post latelly whit the us vs them mentality, looks like its working though so congrats to yah feds. Divide and conquer is as old as warfare itself isnt it?

    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      People do suggest there are liberal echo chambers, and there are conspiracy theories that liberals are brainwashed. Not sure if that’s the same. Right now the stuff I could see misinformation against liberals could do might not be that useful to anyone inclined to push misinformation. I guess democrats are just generally less in lockstep anyway so you’re picking one or another fringe but maybe not enough to accomplish much.

      The only thing currently uniting liberals that’s not probably just how the world is might be just DEI stuff, which I don’t actually think is that disruptive yet.

      • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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        1 year ago

        What would a liberal echo chamber even look like anyway?

        From everything I’ve seen and experienced, liberals mostly take things with a grain of salt and will gladly criticize their leaders’ flaws. But conservatives on the other hand are pretty much universally riled up against Trudeau like he’s the coming of satan.

        Liberals tend to share ideologies, conservatives tend to share their hate for anything liberal and “woke”. Only the latter makes it easy to develop an echo chamber.

        I don’t see anyone being a complete Trudeau fan, or a Biden fan in the south. But what you do see in the south is people still being Trump diehards 3 indictments and several felony charges in, and calling the DOJ and FBI corrupt for attacking their dear leader. If the FBI finds dirt on democrats/Biden, the voters will happily get rid of Biden and replace him with someone less corrupt. Conservative ideologies are a lot more in the vibe of the goal justify the means, any means to get what they want.

        One side tries to find solutions with varying degrees of success, the other focuses on outrage and criticizing the situation without really offering solutions or just ignore the problems in the name of not being inconvenienced.

        • Cleverdawny@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There’s plenty of left wing echo chambers, but they’re leftist, not liberal. r/wayofthebern, for instance, or one of the various communist subreddits are good examples.

          The difference here is that leftists extreme enough to fall into those echo chambers are far less common than conservatives. And, of course, they represent a very small subset of the left when compared to conservatives who accept misinformation.

          • yata@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            wayofthebern was founded by Trumpists in an attempt to divide and conquer Democrats prior to the 2016 election. Back when masstagger worked on reddit you could see all of the users in that sub being regular posters on thedonald, conservative and the rest of the trumpist subs. It was also very obvious in how they never post anything about the policies Bernie Sanders are for, but only ever post threads that smears other Democrats.

            It was never a sub for actual Bernie voters, not even “extreme leftists”. It was extreme rightist all the way down.