Disinformation and fake news triumph on Facebook – InTallaght

That Facebook and social media have a very serious problem with misinformation it is something that no one escapes. Since the times of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is known that there are many sources of false news and aimed at manipulating public opinion through falsehoods in all areas. From politics to health (and in this regard we have had very clear examples with the coronavirus), everything has a place on Facebook.

Although Facebook claims to work against this type of content, and certainly in the case of the coronavirus its efforts are being noticed on the network, the truth is that there is generally the opinion that they act too lightly in this regard. And as a result of a peer-reviewed study by researchers from New York University and the Universit Grenoble Alpes in France, it appears that this could have an explanation. And it is that the investigation shows that lFalse information garnered six times more engagement on Facebook than real news.

As we can read in The Washington Post, the study analyzed the Facebook page posts of more than 2,500 news publishers between August 2020 and January 2021. The researchers found that Pages that post more false information on a regular basis get more likes, shares, and comments. This circumstance was observed across the political spectrum, but the study found that editors on the right are much more likely to share misleading information than editors in other political categories, according to the report.

In response to this study, a Facebook spokesperson told the US newspaper that interactions do not represent the full scope of each post. In other words, a publication with fewer interactions could, in reality, have reached many more users of the social network and, consequently, have been more read. However, the researchers affirm that the social network does not provide such information at all.

As an example, the researchers used CrowdTangle, a Facebook tool that offers analytics on posts. The problem is that In August, Facebook cut off this group of researchers access to this data, as well as the library of political ads on the platform. Facebook claimed that continuing to give outside investigators access to the data could violate an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission it signed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a claim the FTC called inaccurate.

If Facebook is acting against disinformation, why are you concerned about this type of investigation? The US regulator has already stated that the justification provided by the social network is inaccurate? They may be wary of your capabilities in this regard, and dislike anything that is known to have become a platform for spreading fake news. Nevertheless, limiting outside research that might help you, it certainly sounds a bit ugly.

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Disinformation and fake news triumph on Facebook - InTallaght