"There was also a strong correlation between what people read and how they voted. "The most surprising finding of our study is that fake news affects both the right and the left, the educated and uneducated," The Trade Desk's CEO, Jeff Green, told Business Insider. Plus, it's an important reminder that liberal readers (and voters) are also susceptible to the lure of a too-good-to-be-true headline. That said, The Trade Desk is doing these analyses as the industry tries to work out how to keep advertisers away from this kind of content. The analysis looked at only two stories, and we don't know what readers did next (like share the story on Facebook). We're describing this as a "glimpse" into fake-news readers because there's an obvious limitation to the study. It created a "relevance score" that shows the ratio of the likelihood that a reader of an article has a certain trait, like an age bracket or a gender, compared to the prevalence of that trait in the overall US population. The Trade Desk used the "cookie pool" - or the list of other websites viewed within an hour of reading one of the fake stories - of users clicking each story to try to home in on profiles of who these readers are. The Standing Rock story was specifically outed by Snopes as one that was dubbed "fake" by one of the protest organizers. The fact-checking site lists a number "false" stories from American News, including this one about a plan to add President Barack Obama to Mount Rushmore. They Have Momentum Now," while the other was a story titled "Police Raid Standing Rock Camp, Dismantle Tipis And Are Burning What Remains" from the Alternative Media Syndicate. One story was from a site called American News titled "BREAKING: Congressional Plot To Bring Down Donald Trump Escalates. While the focus these days is on fake news that targeted conservative voters - thanks to the specific allegation that the Russian government propagated this kind if misinformation on Facebook to sway last year's presidential election - it's important to note that liberal readers were also lured into fake stories that fit their political mind-set.Īd-tech company The Trade Desk took a closer look at the readers of fake-news stories of both kinds to build a profile of who took the bait - both from the right and the left - using the same tools a business might deploy to target their advertising. Who reads fake news anyway? We all have that uncle or colleague who shares dubiously sourced articles from websites that sound like they belong to national news organizations but don't. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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