Elderly, conservatives more likely to share fake news

Some of the Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American election AP

WASHINGTON — Sharing false information on Facebook is old.

People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study finds.

The first major study to look at who is sharing links from debunked sites finds that not many people are doing it.

On average only 8.5 percent of those studied — about one person out of 12 — shared false information during the 2016 campaign, according to the study in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. But those doing it tend to be older and more conservative.

“For something to be viral you’ve got to know who shares it,” said study co-author Jonathan Nagler, a politics professor and co-director of the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University.

“Wow, old people are much more likely than young people to do this.”

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Facebook and other social media companies were caught off guard in 2016 when Russian agents exploited their platforms to meddle with the US presidential election by spreading fake news, impersonating Americans and running targeted advertisements to try to sway votes.

Since then, the companies have thrown millions of dollars and thousands of people into fighting false information.

Researchers at Princeton University and NYU in 2016 interviewed 2,711 people who used Facebook. Of those, nearly half agreed to share all their postings with the professors.

The researchers used three different lists of false information sites — one compiled by BuzzFeed and two others from academic research teams — and counted how often people shared from those sites.

Then to double check, they looked at 897 specific articles that had been found false by fact checkers and saw how often those were spread.

All those lists showed similar trends.

When other demographic factors and overall posting tendencies are factored in, the average person older than 65 shared seven times more false information than those between 18 and 29.

The seniors shared more than twice as many fake stories as people between 45 and 64 and more than three times that of people in the 30- to 44-year-old range, said lead study author Andrew Guess, a politics professor at Princeton.

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The simplest theory for why older people share more false information is a lack of “digital literacy,” said study co-author Joshua Tucker, also co-director of the NYU social media political lab. Senior citizens may not tell truth from lies on social networks as easily as others, the researchers said.

Harvard public policy and communication professor Matthew Baum, who was not part of the study but praised it, said he thinks sharing false information is “less about beliefs in the facts of a story than about signaling one’s partisan identity.”

That’s why efforts to correct fakery don’t really change attitudes and one reason why few people share false information, he said.

When other demographics and posting practices are factored in, people who called themselves very conservative shared the most false information, a bit more than those who identify themselves as conservative.

The very conservatives shared misinformation 6.8 times more often than the very liberals and 6.7 times more than moderates. People who called themselves liberals essentially shared no fake stories, Guess said.

Nagler said he was not surprised that conservatives in 2016 shared more fake information, but he and his colleagues said that does not necessarily mean that conservatives are by nature more gullible when it comes to false stories. It could simply reflect that there was much more pro-Trump and anti-Clinton false information in circulation in 2016 that it drove the numbers for sharing, they said.

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Russian trolls tried to discourage black voters to get Trump elected

However, Baum said in an email that conservatives post more false information because they tend to be more extreme, with less ideological variation than their liberal counterparts and they take their lead from President Trump, who “advocates, supports, shares and produces fake news/misinformation on a regular basis.”

The researchers looked at differences in gender, race and income but could not find any statistically significant differences in sharing of false information.

After much criticism, Facebook made changes to fight false information, including de-emphasizing proven false stories in people’s feeds so others are less likely to see them.

It seems to be working, Guess said. Facebook officials declined to comment.

“I think if we were to run this study again, we might not get the same results,” Guess said.

MIT’s Deb Roy, a former Twitter chief media scientist, said the problem is that the American news diet is “full of balkanized narratives” with people seeking information that they agree with and calling true news that they don’t agree with fake.

“What a mess,” Roy said.

Astronomers intercept mysterious repeating radio signals from space

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Astronomers have intercepted a series of radio signals from a galaxy a billion light years away, according to research published in Nature magazine.

The 13 radio bursts were picked up by a telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Canada. One of the signals repeated six times from the same location.

The signals — known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) — have been speculated to be coming from neutron stars merging or even aliens.

The bursts last for only a millisecond and are flung out with the same amount of energy that the sun produces in a year.

This is the second time an intercepted radio signal has ever repeated, which scientists believe could provide clues to uncover its origin.

“Knowing that there is another [FRB] suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles — where they’re from and what causes them,” astrophysicist Ingrid Stairs told the Independent.

The only other known repeated radio burst was captured in 2012 and originated in a galaxy 2.5 billion light-years away from Earth, Nature reported.

A majority of the intercepted fast radio bursts shows signs of “scattering,” a phenomenon that reveals information about the environment where the radio waves originated from, Phys.org reported.

The telescope at the Canadian observatory that found the latest signals had previously detected the lowest frequency FRB known on record at wavelengths of 400 megahertz, according to Nature.

Astronaut accidentally dialed 911 from space station

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André Kuipers Getty Images

An astronaut has told how he accidentally rang 911 from space — sending security teams at NASA’s Houston base into a frenzy.

André Kuipers missed a number when making a call through headquarters back on Earth — and ended up connecting to US emergency services.

The astronomical blunder sparked panic at the Johnson Space Center in Texas and a security team was scrambled to the room where the call was put through.

He had been orbiting Earth in the International Space Station when he tried to make the call.

The 60-year-old spaceman explained how he had pressed 9 to make an outside call.

He then tried to phone internationally by pressing 011 — but mistakenly left out the zero.

Oblivious to the chaos he caused, the Dutchman said he only realized his error when he received an email the following day.

Speaking in an interview about the screw-up, he told Dutch public broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting: “I made a mistake. The next day I received an email message: ‘Did you call 911?'”

Kuipers joked: “I was a little disappointed that they had not come up.”

The astronaut — who completed two space missions totaling 203 days — also told how it is surprisingly easy to communicate with Earth while on board the ISS.

He said calls worked 70 percent of the time — but that huge time delays were a struggle.

Kuipers recalled: “Sometimes people would hang up because they thought I did not say anything, so later on I started to talk as soon as I had dialed the last number.”

The starman was interviewed to mark 50 years since Neil Armstrong’s moon landing.

In 2015, British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted about calling a wrong number from the ISS.

He wrote: “I’d like to apologize to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ — not a prank call… just a wrong number!”

Tech conference takes steps toward gender equity

Attendees stand in front of a QLED TV at the Samsung booth during CES International. AP

NEW YORK — The world’s largest tech conference has apparently learned a big lesson about gender equity.

CES, the huge annual consumer-electronics show in Las Vegas, caught major flak from activists in late 2017 when it unveiled an all-male lineup of keynote speakers for the second year in a row. Although it later added two female keynoters, the gathering’s “boys’ club” reputation remained intact. It didn’t help that one of the unsanctioned events latching on to CES last year was a nightclub featuring female “robot strippers.”

This year, four of the nine current keynoters are women. GenderAvenger, the activist group that raised a ruckus last year, recently sent CES organizers a congratulatory letter and awarded the show a “Gold Stamp of Approval” for a roster of keynote and “featured” speakers that it says is 45 percent women — 60 percent of them women of color.

It’s a significant change for CES, which like most tech conferences remains disproportionately male, just like the industry it serves. Even absent the robot dogs, sci-fi-worthy gadgets and “booth babes” CES has been known for, you could readily peg it as a technology show from the bathroom lines alone — where men shift uncomfortably as they wait their turn while women waltz right in.

Keynoters this year include IBM CEO Ginni Rometty; Lisa Su, CEO of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices; and US Transportation Security Elaine Chao. The entire featured speaker list is currently half female, although the exact percentage won’t be known until after the event. “There is no question we keep trying to do better,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes CES.

“Diversity is about having people who see things differently — frankly, disagree with you and tell you that you are stupid,” said Tania Yuki, CEO of social media analytics company Shareablee and an attendee of CES for the past several years. The big question, she says, is whether CES has really listened to its critics.

CES is the place to be for tech companies and startups to show off their latest gadgets and features. More than 180,000 people are expected to attend this year and some 4,500 companies will be on the convention floor. Among them are newcomers like Tide maker Procter & Gamble, defense contractor Raytheon and tractor seller John Deere — all eager to burnish their technology bona fides.

But really leveling the playing field often means more than inviting female CEOs to speak. For starters, women and people of color are underrepresented in the tech industry, especially in leadership and technical roles. So, conference organizers might need to look harder or be more flexible in who they invite to speak.

There are also optics. While recent attendees say “booth babes” — scantily clad women hawking gadgets — no longer seem to be a presence, some companies still hire “fitness models,” largely young women wearing tight-fitting outfits, to demo products. This can make it difficult for the few women at the show who are there as executives, engineers and other technologists, as men mistake them for models, too.

“When you are talking about scantily clad models you are setting a tone,” said Bobbie Carlton, the founder of Innovation Women, a speaker bureau for women. “It is a slippery slope and you end up with this type of mentality that runs through industry, where women are objectified and are only useful if they look good.”

More optics: Until recently, a porn convention taking place immediately after CES appeared more diverse than CES itself. Not a good look for the tech confab.

There are also logistical challenges, Carlton said. For example, women often work for smaller companies, which can find it more challenging to “send someone cross-country to stay at a fancy hotel for three days,” she said.

Rajia Abdelaziz is CEO of invisaWear, a startup that makes smart “safety jewelry.” While she’s attending CES this year, she said it wasn’t worth the $10,000 it would cost her company to have its own convention-floor booth. In addition to the cost concerns, Abdelaziz notes that her products are primarily aimed at women — and there just aren’t that many of them at CES.

Women are also still more likely to be responsible for the home and for child care, so they might turn down speaking opportunities if the timing doesn’t work for them, Carlton said.

CES has tried to make some concessions. For example, it offers private pods for women to pump breast milk at the event. But it doesn’t offer childcare support, unlike the smaller Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing conference, a fall event aimed at women in computer science.

Organizers note that children are not permitted at CES. Although kids are also banned from Grace Hopper, that conference still manages to offer free childcare for attendees.

Still, Yuki is hopeful that CES is on the right track. “It’s a big conference,” she said. “You can only turn a very big ship very slowly.”