ArticleeLife2023
Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation.
Article in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Spotting false news and doubting true news: a systematic review and meta-analysis of news judgements.Nature human behaviour · 2025Pooled it
- Blueprint of a smokescreen: Introducing the validated climate disinformation corpus for behavioural research on combating climate disinformation.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Disinformation elicits learning biases.eLife · 2026Article
- A cross sectional content analysis evaluates chemotherapy health information quality and reliability on TikTok and Bilibili.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A computational model of reward learning and habits on social media.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Motivations to connect with like-minded audiences increase partisan sharing on social media.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Message source effects on rejection and costly punishment of criticism across cultures.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Experience and advice consequences shape information sharing strategies.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Metacognition biases information seeking in assessing ambiguous news.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world.PNAS nexus · 2024Review
- Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation.eLife · 2023Article
- Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The powerful allure of social media platforms has been attributed to the human need for social rewards. Here, we demonstrate that the spread of misinformation on such platforms is facilitated by existing social 'carrots' (e.g., 'likes') and 'sticks' (e.g., 'dislikes') that are dissociated from the veracity of the information shared. Testing 951 participants over six experiments, we show that a slight change to the incentive structure of social media platforms, such that social rewards and punishments are contingent on information veracity, produces a considerable increase in the discernment of shared information. Namely, an increase in the proportion of true information shared relative to the proportion of false information shared. Computational modeling (i.e., drift-diffusion models) revealed the underlying mechanism of this effect is associated with an increase in the weight participants assign to evidence consistent with discerning behavior. The results offer evidence for an intervention that could be adopted to reduce misinformation spread, which in turn could reduce violence, vaccine hesitancy and political polarization, without reducing engagement.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.