🚨New Paper🚨 Many have asked my opinion on @elonmusk's new verification, blue check & identity cue ideas for @Twitter.

Today we published a large-scale experiment in @NatureHumBehav showing identity cues have dramatic effects on how we perceive & engage with content online

A🧵 Our paper on "Identity Effects in Social Media" w/ @seanjtaylor @LevMuchnik & @madhavkumar2005 reports the results of a ~*2 yr* experiment on a social media site similar to Reddit, where content was randomly assigned to identified or anonymous conditions w/ & w/o identity cues.

A 🧵 about an important and amazing paper by @RoeeLevyZ, my @MITSloan colleague @alexeymakarin and Luca Braghieri on:

The *Causal* Link between Social Media Use and Mental Health... Now forthcoming in AER.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… There has been wide debate and well founded skepticism until now about the mental health effects of social media use... While it's convenient to blame social media for depression and declining teen and young adult mental health, the causal evidence has been weak to non-existent..

My Predictions for what @elonmusk will do w/ @Twitter

1. A tiered subscription service to try to shore up revenue (this will not solve misinformation or hate speech at all).

2. Clean up bots (it's a low hanging fruit that will help the health of the platform & be an easy win) 3. Several high profile free speech events (expect Donald Trump back on the platform).

4. Content moderation will continue but will be limited to explicitly the bear minimum that meets the Digital Services Act.

5. Mass identity verification similar to @Facebook

🚨Mind Blown🚨 In some "you can't make this stuff up" news, I've written a short piece that I hope gets some attention

Fake News about our Fake News Study Spread Faster than its Truth… Just as We Predicted.

cc: @kakape @danengber @jugander @jonassjuul

link.medium.com/0apVPPck0ob Several prominent journalists recently spread misinformation about the science of misinformation…
They claimed that a study my colleagues @dkroy, @CrashTheMod3 and I published on the cover of @ScienceMagazine in 2018 had been debunked.
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Important & well written counter argument to my WAPO article on the subject by @carljackmiller. But, my argument is that Russia & anti-western social media did all this before. Difference today is the strength of Ukrainian efforts & platform response. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Both arguments can be true. In 2014 what @carljackmiller writes about dominated the information space almost unopposed & the pro Ukrainian take down efforts were much more effective than today. Still: vigilance is still essential.

[🚨Event Announcement🚨] As Director of the @mit_ide (and on behalf of our amazing team) I'm so proud to announce the launch of The First Social Media Summit at MIT (SMS@MIT)! #SMSMIT

ide.mit.edu/events/the-soc… 1/ SMS@MIT brings together the world’s leading thinkers on social technology to examine the impact of social media on our democracies, our economies, and our public health — with a vision to craft meaningful *solutions* to the social media crisis. 2/

[#GameStop Thread] This week, social media coordination created a spike in the @GameStop stock that rose over 1700% as retail investors coordinated over information on @reddit and other social media to pump the stock. 1/8 Millions of small investors, egged on by social media, employed a classic Wall Street tactic to put the squeeze — on Wall Street, especially short sellers. 2/8

nytimes.com/2021/01/27/bus…

[🚨 The Splinternet Manifests🚨] We are now witnessing the factionalization of our information ecosystem in real time. Our human network is being torn apart, into two polarized tribes, as a result of the violence that took place at the Capital on Wednesday... A few thoughts: 1/ First, @facebook banned Trump indefinitely citing the danger of incitements to violence... 2/
nytimes.com/2021/01/07/tec…

On 10/26 I predicted a version of what is unfolding in the Capital today. I wasn't alone. Scientists & experts have warned for months (years) of the powder keg brewing in our information ecosystem. How does this happen & how can we stop it? Read on👇🏽link.medium.com/maKhkqBRPcb As we predicted: The storming of the Capital was organized on social media 👇🏽
nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/…

[🚨New Book🚨] Today is the BIG DAY! With the help of so many amazing people, I'm SO excited to launch my first book, THE HYPE MACHINE, today!

sinanaral.io/books

For those of you who like to sample before you buy, here is a sneak peak at the book in 12 acts 1/ [Chapter 1] opens with the annexation of Crimea as a leading example of the geopolitical impact of the New Social Age. It provides new evidence on the role of social media in the Crimean annexation - the first forceful redrawing of European borders since WWII. 2/

I think this is one of the main entry points into the debate: Regardless of levels there's a debate about the marginal effect of technology which is largely on the side of narrowing consumption deeply (within) and broadly (across) choice areas 1/t

https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1303720284810342403

Then there's the question about the impact of a marginal change: levels data suggests narrow consumption is not the norm, but what do marginal changes in consumption do to beliefs and behaviors (that's largely unknown) 2/

[🚨New Paper🚨] Published today in Management Science @INFORMS with @dhillon_p on "Digital Paywall Design."

We collaborated with the @nytimes to analyze a natural experiment on how "digital paywall design" impacts publishers' subscription rates and revenues. 1/ The study tracked the browsing behavior of 177M unique visitors who accumulated over 777M page views, from which we constructed a 30M person quasi-experimental panel over the 7-month study. 2/

[🚨NEW WORKING PAPER🚨] As local governments reopen, we study how policies in one region affect mobility & social distancing in other regions & the consequences of uncoordinated policy responses to #Covid_19. 1/

bit.ly/2XgLV55 The key takeaway is a state or county's policies significantly affect mobility in other states & counties -- not just in geographically proximate states but often a great distance through long distance travel & influence over social media and other communication technology. 2/

[The Threat to Florida] There are good reasons to suspect Florida will be the next #coronavirus hotspot in the U.S. and that it will eventually be one of the hardest hit regions. Several unfortunate facts point to this possibility... 1/ Kinsa Health, a smart thermometer company using thermometer readings across the US to predict where COVID-19 might strike next, is reporting "the level of illness in Florida is 2X what we would expect," & is experiencing the most abnormal spikes in temperature (see the map) 2/

MIT has Posted Free Plans Online for an Emergency Ventilator That Can Be Built for $100.

scitechdaily.com/mit-posts-free…

[The Silent Secret of COVID-19] One dimension of the novel coronavirus that is critical to containment but has not received enough attention is the prevalence of asymptotic cases in the population. 1/ If a large fraction of positive cases are 'hidden,' they could escape public health interventions and prevent the effectiveness of social distancing. What do we know and what does it mean for our fight against the virus? 2/

[The Economic Fallout from COVID-19] Today the White House's top economist Robert Ludlow said the "fundamentals of the economy are strong." This idea misses in its entirety the existential threat the global economy is facing from COVID-19. 1/ The fundamentals of last month's economy are irrelevant because this pandemic threatens a once in a century meltdown. Why? Because it is an interdependent threat that is not limited to any one sector of the economy. 2/

[Thread] Over the last 72 hours, a large fraction of the world has isolated itself in an effort at "social distancing" to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This isolation will likely last for months. This is thread is about the mental health impacts of this global isolation... 1/ As I write in my upcoming book "The Hype Machine," "Isolation is aversive & unsafe for social species. It decreases the lifespan of fruit flies, promotes obesity and Type II diabetes and reduces post-stroke survival rates in mice,..." amazon.com/Hype-Machine-D… 2/

[Thread] As the incoming director of a large research center (@mit_ide), the general chair of a large international conference (@IC2S2), an educator, scientist, father and citizen, I, like everyone have been reading and thinking about COVID-19. 1/ The following is a thread of the most important articles/concepts I have read that are informing how I change my own personal behavior. I hope it’s helpful to others… 2/

[Thread] Preserving Democracy: @deaneckles and I just published our paper in @sciencemagazine on "Protecting Elections from Social Media Manipulation.": bit.ly/2L7gMw9 1/ While Robert Mueller is warning election interference is "among the most serious challenges to democracy" he has ever seen and FBI Director Christopher Wray is telling us "the threat just keeps escalating"... too little is being done. 2/