A new study of 35 million news links circulated on Facebook reports that more than 75% of the time they were shared without the link being clicked upon and read

  • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    If it makes anyone feel any better, the researchers didn’t click the links either.

    To determine the political content of shared links, the researchers in this study used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to identify and classify political terms in the link content.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      You’re lucky if researchers read the sources they cited beyond the abstract! Lol

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    12 hours ago

    I share Onion headlines without reading the articles. The headline is usually about 90% of the laugh.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      And there are a bajillion of them, and all completely random. You could read for the rest of your life and not get through a single day’s worth of shared articles. That said, you really should read something before sharing it. That part is just stupid.

    • TʜᴇʀᴀᴘʏGⒶʀʏ@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 hours ago

      This article is about sharing links without having read the content, not just scrolling past or commenting without reading first

      Edit: a more accurate headline would be

      Facebook users probably won’t read beyond this headline before sharing it, researchers say

      • Kintarian@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        At first the author states:

        The findings, which the researchers said suggest that social media users tend to merely read headlines and blurbs rather than fully engage with core content, appeared today (Nov. 19) in Nature Human Behavior. While the data were limited to Facebook, the researchers said the findings could likely map to other social media platforms and help explain why misinformation can spread so quickly online.

        This implies all social media users. Later it mentions sharing information.

        If I cared , I would read the paper. I think the author didn’t do a very good job from headline on.

        • TʜᴇʀᴀᴘʏGⒶʀʏ@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 hours ago

          I know they think it might generalize to other platforms, but there’s little evidence to say so, and I doubt the percentage is nearly as bad on other platforms, especially Lemmy (which is the only social media I use, so the only thing relevant to me and many others here)

          There’s likely also a high percentage of people who form opinions about and comment on headlines without reading the content, but that’s not what this paper measured

      • Kintarian@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Oh, ok. It seemed they were talking about people only reading the headlines, then sharing with people who only read the headlines.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Right? Do you expect me to click on 90% of articles?

      Social media is a filter. I’m using it to figure out what is worth clicking on.

  • SlippiHUD@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    This headline is barely even about the article. The blurb provides enough context to know what the content is about atleast.

    But apparently most links on social media don’t even do that.

    It’s accidentally proving its point, much like that meme where the paper on the inaccessibility of science is being denied by a paywall.