How is Fake News Spread? Bots, People like You, Trolls, and Microtargeting | Center for Information Technology and Society - UC Santa Barbara

To be most effective, fake news needs to be spread through social media to reach receptive audiences. In this section, we explore how bots and flesh-and-blood people spread fake news; how cookies are used to track people's visit to websites, create personality profiles, and show them fake news content that they are most receptive to. We also look at trolls, that is, people who set up social media accounts for the sole purpose of spreading fake news and fanning the flames of misinformation. What’s a Bot? In addition to the billions of human beings using social media, there are also millions of robots, or bots, residing within. Bots help to propagate fake news and inflate the apparent popularity of fake news on social media. Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) have become home to millions of social bots that spread fake news. According to a 2017 estimate, there were 23 million bots on Twitter (around 8.5% of all accounts), 140 million bots on Facebook (up to 5.5%

To be most effective, fake news needs to be spread through social media to reach receptive audiences. In this section, we explore how bots and flesh-and-blood people spread fake news; how cookies are used to track people's visit to websites, create personality profiles, and show them fake news content that they are most receptive to. We also look at trolls, that is, people who set up social media accounts for the sole purpose of spreading fake news and fanning the flames of misinformation. What’s a Bot? In addition to the billions of human beings using social media, there are also millions of