The Small Effect of Short User Corrections on Misinformation in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

How effective are user corrections in combatting misinformation on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve their effectiveness? We conducted a pre-registered online experiment on representative samples of the online population in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom (N participants = 3,000, N observations = 24,000). We found that in India and Brazil, short user corrections slightly, but often not significantly, reduced belief in misinformation and participants’ willingness to share it. In the United Kingdom, these effects were even smaller and not significant. We found little evidence that fact-check links made user corrections more effective. Overall, our results suggest that short user corrections have small effects and that adding a fact-check link is unlikely to make user corrections much more effective.