Instagram, vote manipulation, and information cascade
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-s-instagram-poised-be-2020-disinformation-battleground-experts-say-n1063941
The NBC article mentioned how Instagram is attempting to combat misinformation on its platform, primarily spread through the use of images and memes. Since social media posts have public engagement levels, the popularity of posts closely follows the power-law distribution, otherwise known as the “rich get richer” phenomenon. This is because when users look at a post, they are more likely to share it if they see that others have also liked that post.
However, this phenomenon can easily contribute to the formation of an information cascade. For example, a post with misinformation can be made popular through a network that consists of bots. Once the posts have gotten the initial fake “engagement”, real users will see the popular post and assume that it is valid because a lot of other people agree with the post. Therefore, the user is more likely to share the post with others. This, in turn, creates an information cascade which results in other users sharing the same post, further spreading the information. The cascade creates a problematic situation when the information being spread in untruthful.
The article also mentions the different tactics used by trolls on the internet to spread their propaganda, such as pandering to both political parties on numerous issues in the hope of gaining traction for their posts. The trolls are not completely concerned about how many of their posts will become popular but are concerned with getting at least one of them to be popular to get the ball rolling. As such, social media creates a unique problem where people are more interested in garnering attention than pushing out quality posts.