Labelling Trump's lies as 'disputed' on X makes supporters believe them more
(theguardian.com)7 points by justin66 8 hours ago
7 points by justin66 8 hours ago
Final para of article:
> “We can’t pinpoint why disputed tags backfired among Trump voters, but distrust of the platform may have played a role,” Blanchard said. “Given the conservative distrust of Twitter at the time, it’s possible Trump supporters saw the tags as a clear attempt to restrict their autonomy, prompting them to double down on misinformation.”
Claiming to believing the disputed and/or (objectively) ridiculous assertions of your own group's creeds and leaders has been a very common way to demonstrate group loyalty...since before the pyramids were built.
Maybe the Guardian is too shallow to know that; maybe this is just another "clicks pay the bills" story for those zealously opposed to Trump. Either way, one should never take the Guardian too seriously.
Yep. It’s almost as if folks take a skeptical view of fact-checks that come from their political opposition. Strange and surprising, indeed.
Incidentally, if there were any Democrats on truth social, and they saw their candidate’s quote labeled “disputed”, I’m sure the same bias would be observed. This is unsurprising to anyone with even a cursory understanding of human nature.
> “Surprisingly, those Trump voters with higher political knowledge actually strengthened their belief in election misinformation when exposed to disputed tags, compared to a control condition without tags,” Blanchard said.
This isn’t surprising. Trump supporters with high political knowledge are more aware of how the sausage is made, and are more skeptical of the media and fact checkers than those who have paid less attention.