Abstract A growing literature is emerging on the believability and spread of disinformation, such as fake news, over social networks. However, little is known about the degree to which malicious actors can use social media to covertly affect behavior with disinformation. A lab-based randomized controlled experiment was conducted with 233 undergraduate students to investigate the behavioral effects of fake news. It was found that even short (under 5-min) exposure to fake news was able to significantly modify the unconscious behavior of individuals. This paper provides initial evidence that fake news can be used to covertly modify behavior, it argues that current approaches to mitigating fake news, and disinformation in general, are insufficient to protect social media users from this threat, and it highlights the implications of this for democracy. It raises the need for an urgent cross-sectoral effort to investigate, protect against, and mitigate the risks of covert, widespread and decentralized behavior modification over online social networks.

中文翻译：

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如果假新闻改变了你的行为，你会注意到吗？关于虚假信息的无意识影响的实验

摘要 关于虚假信息（例如假新闻）在社交网络上的可信度和传播的文献越来越多。然而，对于恶意行为者可以在多大程度上使用社交媒体以虚假信息暗中影响行为，我们知之甚少。对 233 名本科生进行了一项基于实验室的随机对照实验，以调查假新闻的行为影响。研究发现，即使是短时间（少于 5 分钟）接触假新闻也能显着改变个人的无意识行为。本文提供了初步证据，证明假新闻可用于隐蔽地改变行为，它认为目前减轻假新闻和一般虚假信息的方法不足以保护社交媒体用户免受这种威胁，并强调了这一点对以下方面的影响民主。