Most of the information we spread online is quantifiably “bullshit”

people today are inundated with more bullshit now than ever before...
We presented approximately 800 participants across four studies with statements ranging from the mundane to the meaningful. We included some bullshit too...
People who were more religious, more likely to believe in the paranormal, and more accepting of alternative medicine were more receptive to the bullshit... uncritically accepting the (rather blatant) bullshit as meaningful based on how it felt when they first encountered it...
The very nature of the internet may encourage a shallow kind of information processing that facilitates belief in bullshit... Our tendency to offload cognitive functions to our computers forecasts a future in which we think less about what we encounter online, which could have consequences for our receptivity to bullshit.
intuitive thinkers are relatively more likely to rely on search engines for information. Reflective thinkers seem less prone to offload their thinking to devices. Thus, intuitive thinkers may not only be more prone to accepting bullshit, they also might be more likely to find it...
The task ahead is to help people understand how to separate the signal from the noise online... An increasingly important challenge ... is to find ways to convey the truth in impressive ways that both inform and entertain.