A new study of 35 million news links circulated on Facebook reports that more than 75% of the time they were shared without the link being clicked upon and read

76 points

I don’t read 90% of the articles because they’re mostly crap.

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This article is about sharing links without having read the content, not just scrolling past or commenting without reading first

Edit: a more accurate headline would be

Facebook users probably won’t read beyond this headline before sharing it, researchers say

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3 points

Oh, ok. It seemed they were talking about people only reading the headlines, then sharing with people who only read the headlines.

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1 point

At first the author states:

The findings, which the researchers said suggest that social media users tend to merely read headlines and blurbs rather than fully engage with core content, appeared today (Nov. 19) in Nature Human Behavior. While the data were limited to Facebook, the researchers said the findings could likely map to other social media platforms and help explain why misinformation can spread so quickly online.

This implies all social media users. Later it mentions sharing information.

If I cared , I would read the paper. I think the author didn’t do a very good job from headline on.

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I know they think it might generalize to other platforms, but there’s little evidence to say so, and I doubt the percentage is nearly as bad on other platforms, especially Lemmy (which is the only social media I use, so the only thing relevant to me and many others here)

There’s likely also a high percentage of people who form opinions about and comment on headlines without reading the content, but that’s not what this paper measured

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5 points

Right? Do you expect me to click on 90% of articles?

Social media is a filter. I’m using it to figure out what is worth clicking on.

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4 points

Politics, sensationalism, click bait, fear mongering. A lot of content is useless to me.

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3 points

And there are a bajillion of them, and all completely random. You could read for the rest of your life and not get through a single day’s worth of shared articles. That said, you really should read something before sharing it. That part is just stupid.

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40 points
*

Upvoted without reading just to perpetuate the narrative.

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4 points

Can you tell me what the headline said? I never read those (either).

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26 points

If it makes anyone feel any better, the researchers didn’t click the links either.

To determine the political content of shared links, the researchers in this study used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to identify and classify political terms in the link content.

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11 points

You’re lucky if researchers read the sources they cited beyond the abstract! Lol

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21 points

I share Onion headlines without reading the articles. The headline is usually about 90% of the laugh.

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2 points

I disagree, you’re missing out.

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2 points

Seriously, it reminds me of SNL sometimes. You know what you’re expecting but they hit you with some really good zingers sometimes (Bill Burr SNL - Rorschach Test)

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20 points

Maybe they are just aware of clickbait bullshit? Make headlines deliver on the payload of the article.

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