Misinformation Resharing in VLMs

Vision-language models reshare false news more readily when it includes an image, and personality traits shape this further.

Misinformation spreading. We study vision-Language Models’ (VLMs) propensity to reshare news content. Our key findings are that: Image presence increases resharing rates by 4.8% for true news but a much larger 15.0% for false news. Dark Triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) amplify resharing of false news. Republican-aligned profiles show reduced sensitivity to veracity, sharing both true and false news at similar rates. Read more