There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about the claims made in this article, not the least of which is the completely unsubstantiated claim that literacy and fact-checking have no impact on the spread of fake news. There is some reason to believe that an additional mechanism, user interface design, may also play a role. "The point," says MIT professor David Rand, "is that the platforms are, by design, constantly distracting people from accuracy." Not exactly. It's more like, if you prime people to think about accuracy beforehand, this will slow their sharing of inaccurate headlines, and the platforms don't do that. And, of course, this would have no impact on bots or on people who share maliciously. You can read the full results in their study published in an in-house journal, Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (12 page PDF).
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