From the WSJ: "Scientists at the Indiana University are studying Twitter to investigate the nature of truth, lies and politics", quite a revealing video report.
It's a good sign of the (future) times, I guess... with some simple programming one can use Twitter (and other social tools) in quite a deceptive ways -to manipulate public opinion for political reasons, for instance. The more interconnected the world becomes, the more room we will create for such frauds.
However, I don't agree with the statement of one scientist at the end, who argues that this might constitute a threat to democracy. Decades ago our parents were influenced in their political choices by the one newspaper their parents read, and that contained no less deceptive information. It hasn't threatened our democracy. We can't go back to pre-social media information gathering, so perhaps we have to transform ourselves (and others) into increasingly critical news gatherers instead...
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