messages are spread across --- messages spread across

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GoodTaste

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Joined
Feb 19, 2016
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Student or Learner
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Chinese
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China
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China
What is the difference between "messages are spread across" and "messages spread across"? They seem to mean the same thing: extending. I am not sure.

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Varied, emotive messages
Pro-vaccine groups have a simple message — vaccines work and save lives. Anti-vaccine narratives are numerous: from sowing worries about children’s health to advocating alternative medicines and linking immunizations to conspiracy theories. And the anti-vaccination messages are spread across many more Facebook clusters than are those from the larger pro-vaccine groups. Johnson says these features echo those his team has found in earlier studies of insurgency networks in conflict zones, where insurgents could often embed themselves deeply into existing social networks.


-from Nature
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01423-4
 
We don't tend to use the things that the verb spread describes as the agent of that verb.

I spread my books on the table. :tick: [The agent is me and my books are the things that the verb describes]
My books are spread on the table. :tick: [My books are the things that the verb describes]

My books spread on the table. :cross:
 
The sentence with are implies an agent: the people who do the spreading. If you omit are, it sounds like the messages spread themselves.
 
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