Reza Aslan and Fake News
Here is a small example of how misinformation is beneficial to those who spread it.
Word travels fast in our world, and often it’s the false words that travel the fastest.
The latest example of this phenomenon stems from the recent extreme weather in Texas. It’s created the opportunity for many to pounce on this as a direct example of climate change. Maybe it is. I certainly don’t know.
What I do know is how easy it is to believe something when it fits your favorite narrative, which brings us to this Reza Aslan tweet:
I don’t know where he found this tweet, but he must have felt pretty triumphant to post it. There’s a problem though. Ted Cruz never said it.
Many organizations, including those who are no friend of Ted Cruz, have fact checked this and discovered the tweet is fake. Aslan also learned Cruz’s supposed tweet was fake. He admitted as much in a follow up tweet a mere three minutes later:
That little correction did nothing to stall his initial tweet’s momentum.
Typical Aslan tweets get a few hundred likes, if that. But the fake tweet about Cruz has netted him nearly 200k likes so far. And it’s still (as of the writing of this article) propagating through to the millions of drone scrollers on Twitter.
Aslan has been chided for not deleting the tweet, and it seems he thinks he’s right to leave it up:
So… what does Aslan have to gain by leaving misinformation on his Twitter feed? He gains the benefits of a viral tweet.
… there’s little personal incentive for him to push the delete button.
It’s not everyday Aslan writes a tweet that gets this sort of viral attention, so now he gets to capitalize on the best of both worlds. First, he gets to say, “Hey, I admitted it wasn’t real. Didn’t you see my second tweet with 500 likes.” Second, Aslan gets to reap the benefits as Twitter’s algorithm takes note of how much attention his tweet is getting.
Win win for Aslan.
He knows the right thing to do. It’s obvious to anyone who understands how information propagates through our tribalistic networks. But there’s little personal incentive for him to push the delete button.
He despises Cruz, so why would he work to stop the spread of misinformation about him? And why not enjoy a little bump in algorithmic social capital at Cruz’s expense?
I have a reason I hope Aslan would consider.
Our immediate best chance at avoiding the continued unravelling of civil discourse rests not only with those smart enough to parse true from false, but with those wise enough to build bridges with people of differing viewpoints. If people like Aslan would trade their partisanship and self-interest for a higher ideal, then wider trust could potentially be built and a dark future avoided. The same dark future he claims to be so worried about.
Congrats on the viral tweet though, Reza.
