And the science paper that claimed so has been
A team from the Shanghai Institute of Technology sought to study whether accuracy made any difference to whether a post goes viral on social media. They cited a concern about “the digital misinformation that threatens our democracy”:
“The paper found that even though individuals may prefer to read and share “quality information”, factors such as “information overload and limited attention” contributed to “a degradation of the market’s discriminative power”. In other words, Qiu and colleagues concluded, quality material and the rate at which it spreads across the internet “reveals a weak correlation”.
Low quality material – fake news, complete rubbish – is just as likely to go viral as the good stuff.” Andrew Masterson, “Fake news journal paper revealed as fake news” at Cosmos
Their June 2017 study, retracted by Nature earlier this month, had been quoted widely, due to widespread concern about the risk that “fake news” skews election results…
Intuitively, most of us would expect the researchers’ corrected outcome to be more likely than their original one. False or doubtful information can be exciting. But, once its uncertain status is known, those who continue to disseminate it are classed as unreliable sources. Thus, doubtful news is dropped whereas confirmed news continues to circulate. This would hold as true for social media today as for a company cafeteria in the 1970s. News, “Research showing that fake news easily fools us collapses” at Mind Matters
See also: Your phone knows everything now And in a world where no data is anonymous, yours may be sold to the highest bidder