Sacha Altay

@Sacha_Altay

PhD student studying misinformation from an evolutionary perspective. Science writer in my spare time.

Paris, France
Joined May 2018

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  1. Pinned Tweet
    Jan 23

    Had a great poster session at where I presented our paper on fake news: 🙃

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  2. Retweeted
    Jan 29

    Why are rumours always coming from a “friend of a friend”? It’s the sweet spot between plausibility and risking our reputation if we claimed it came from a friend (or indeed directly from us) if the rumour turns out false—cool study by et al:

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  3. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    We are good at processing communication 1 The backfire effect is the (rare) exception rather than the rule h/t

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  4. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    Ch 11 From Circular Reporting to Supernatural Beliefs. When people owe their opinion to the same source, but appear to have formed it independently, they prove more convincing than they should Ft. Nigerien Uranium, the Duna, a friend of a friend,

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  5. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    Fake news aren’t that big a deal 5 Those who spread fake news pay a hefty reputational price With and Anne-Sophie Hacquin

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  6. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    Fake news aren’t that big a deal 1 On the 2019 UK general election “Fewer than 2% of links shared on Twitter during our data collection period were identified as Junk News… Professional News Content constituted over 57% of total traffic.”

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  7. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    This time it IS out! Not Born Yesterday, arguing that people aren’t gullible. Psychology! Political science! History! Anthropology! Media studies! ToC below, and threads to follow with stuff I wish I’d put in the book

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  8. Jan 27

    "there is good evidence that tribalism (ideology) is simply associated with different prior beliefs, which leads to biases and blind spots but not ideologically distorted cognitive processing per se" Loved recent commentary on tribalism:

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  9. Retweeted
    Jan 26

    Very interesting paper and thread, by a friend of a friend.

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  10. Retweeted
    Jan 25

    People who spread rumors instinctively invoke "a friend of a friend" as the source of information, which boosts plausibility.

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  11. Retweeted
    Jan 25

    It Happened to a Friend of a Friend: Inaccurate Source Reporting in Rumor Diffusion.

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  12. Jan 25

    (iv) This preference for attributing rumors to a credible friend of a friend may reflect reputation management considerations. Notably by allowing senders to score social points while minimizing their epistemic responsibility in case the rumor turns out to be false. 5/5

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  13. Jan 25

    (iii) Rumors attributed to a single (not credible) friend dominated linear transmission chains. But ecological transmission chains taking into account redundancy allowed the credible friend of a friend to persist or dominate—as it seems to be the case in the wild. 4/5

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  14. Jan 25

    (ii) Credible friend of a friend attributions remained stable across multiple transmissions, instead of the number of friends mentioned increasing with each transmission, i.e. participants systematically shortened the sources when sharing the rumors. 3/5

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  15. Jan 25

    Key findings: (i) Attribution to a credible friend of a friend increased a rumor’s perceived plausibility, and participants’ willingness to share it. 2/5

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  16. Jan 25

    🚨 New preprint with & Nicolas Claidière on rumor diffusion 🚨 We explain why so many rumors (like the ones below) are attributed to a credible friend of a friend. Pre-print: 1/5

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  17. Retweeted
    Jan 24

    Subrena Smith recently argued that “evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is…impossible.” Here is my response:

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  18. Jan 24

    The best talks are not necessarily given by the most prestigious speakers, and are not always on the topics that you’re the most interested in. At the talk I enjoyed the most was given by on the need to include pragmatic in automatic text analysis.

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  19. Retweeted
    Jan 21

    Our unique ability to recollect specific past events may have evolved to give testimony in the "courtroom" of social life.

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  20. Retweeted
    Jan 17

    My new piece on the limited effectiveness of (most) political campaign persuasion efforts

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