Brandolini's Law: The world, especially the digital world of social media, is full of bullshit. This has never been clearer than in the days of the Corona epidemic - although one or two bullshit records were certainly already set in the preliminary phase, particularly through the presidency of Donald Trump. From generally harmless craziness (Elvis is alive) to embarrassing stupidities (the earth is flat) to potentially dangerous conspiracy myths (the Federal Republic of Germany is actually a GmbH; keyword: armed Reich citizens), there is something for every taste and state of mind.

A lot has already been written and said about how such stories come into the world and why people believe them (here, for example, a podcast from Netzpolitik.org ). An exciting additional question is: Why is it so difficult to fight bullshit (on the internet)? Why do fact-checking sites like Correctiv or Mimikama such a hard time getting their messages through?

Bullshit asymmetry

At this point it helps to take a look at Brandolini's law (also called the bullshit asymmetry) - which is of course not a real law, but just a tongue-in-cheek, probably broadly correct observation - similar to Parkinson's law, for example. Brandolini is an Italian software engineer who achieved considerable fame with his tweet:

Refuting nonsense takes tens of times more energy than putting it out into the world.

Brandolini on fake news
Brandolini on fake news

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. First of all, someone has to actually expend the energy to correct the bullshit. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those people who believe the bullshit are also motivated to deal with the counterarguments. And even if they are confronted with such arguments, that doesn't mean that they will be convinced by them. In fact, people are notoriously bad at changing their views based on counterarguments.

Does that actually do anything?

An Italian research group has evaluated over several years how around 50 million people interact with various content, in this case

a) scientifically verified information and
b) unscientific and fictional information.

Their insight in brief: Filter bubbles and echo chambers actually formed. Some of the users moved almost exclusively in the “scientific filter bubble”, another part almost exclusively in the “unscientific filter bubble”.

The researchers also evaluated how the various user groups responded to corrective reports (“debunking”; a total of over 50,000 reports). The sad news: This form of content was practically not noticed at all in the “unscientific filter bubble”. And when corresponding users were confronted with corrective messages, their interaction with questionable content (like, comment, share) increased. Why this is so is explained here under the heading reactance.

Conclusion: We will have to continue to live with the bullshit. However, a question worth considering is: Where do we personally focus our attention? Where does my energy go?

About the text “Brandolini’s Law”
Content first appeared on Xing , reproduced here with the kind permission of Nico Rose . Prof. Dr.
Nico Rose Professor of Business Psychology, International School of Management for positive psychology, leadership, meaning creation, corporate culture Nico Rose is the meaning putter. Current books: “Doing Work Better” and “Leading with Meaning”. According to Harvard Business Manager, “one of the leading experts in positive psychology in Germany”. Married, two children. Heavy metal fan and cat lover. Member of the FDP Economic Forum. Nico Rose's new book Working Better (with Bernd Slaghuis) has just been published by Haufe.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )