Speed, distraction and emotions can obscure a person's ability to sniff out misinformation on social media.

When a user shares something...It seems that he’s mostly trying to impress his followers and entertain them.

“...vaccination endorsements from elite Republicans...can have an important impact on the vaccination intentions of everyday Republicans.”

"There's no one thing that solves the problem of false news online … But we're working to add promising approaches to the ... tool kit.”

“It's not necessarily that users don't care about accuracy. But instead, it's that the social media context just distracts them … "

"You are even more influenced by fact-checks on false claims that are aligned with your politics compared to ones that aren't."

"Since 2016, [social media] platforms have been under a huge amount of public pressure to act on misinformation."

Poor "truth discernment" (i.e., the ability to tell fake news from real stories) is driven primarily by a lack of careful reasoning.

So far, Birdwatch users appear to be motivated as much by politics as by truth, said [Prof.] David Rand.

"Recent initiatives suggest that platforms may be able to channel partisan motivations to democratise moderation."