More people spread false news than the truth 

In the magazine, Science, Vol. 359, Issue 6380, a report entitled, The spread of true and false news online, Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) noted the concern about false news.

In their study, the group used data of rumours on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. They found that about 126,000 rumours were spread by ∼3 million people. They concluded that false news reached more people than the truth.

We have placed the blame on Russia for spreading false news, but from this report, we see that we are the chief culprits of spreading such inaccurate information.

Our human nature wants to dwell on things that are bad or false. We live on sensational news, thriving on things that are not entirely accurate. It is very easy to share something that we have not vetted as being the truth. With so much information floating around us, we can quite quickly grab hold of something and then pass it on to our friends and followers without taking the time to verify the accuracy of it.

So, we are the primary culprits spreading false news. To desist from doing so, we should take a moment and confirm what we are sharing to be the truth. Obviously, it takes a little more time, but in this way, we will be sharing the fact rather than spreading the fire of false news.