The world's digital information ecosystem continues to struggle with the spread of misinformation. Prior work has suggested that users who consistently disseminate a disproportionate amount of low-credibility content -- so-called superspreaders -- are at the center of this problem. We quantitatively confirm this hypothesis and introduce simple metrics to predict the top superspreaders several months into the future. We then conduct a qualitative review to characterize the most prolific superspreaders and analyze their sharing behaviors. Superspreaders include pundits with large followings, low-credibility media outlets, personal accounts affiliated with those media outlets, and a range of influencers. They are primarily political in nature and use more toxic language than the typical user sharing misinformation. We also find concerning evidence that suggests Twitter may be overlooking prominent superspreaders. We hope this work will further public understanding of bad actors and promote steps to mitigate their negative impacts on healthy digital discourse.

翻译：全球数字信息生态系统持续受到虚假信息传播的困扰。已有研究指出，持续不成比例地散布大量低可信度内容的用户（即所谓的超级传播者）是这一问题的核心。我们通过定量方法验证了这一假设，并引入了简单指标来预测未来数月内的顶级超级传播者。随后，我们通过定性分析刻画了最高产超级传播者的特征，并研究了其分享行为。超级传播者包括拥有大量关注者的权威评论人士、低可信度媒体机构、与这些媒体相关的个人账号以及各类网络意见领袖。这些账号本质具有政治倾向，且相比普通传播虚假信息的用户使用更具攻击性的语言。我们还发现令人担忧的证据，表明推特可能忽视了部分突出的超级传播者。希望本研究能增进公众对恶意行为者的认知，并推动采取措施减少其对健康数字话语体系的负面影响。