Facebook’s Influence on Political Views May Be Greatly Exaggerated, Researchers Find – By Nikki Main (Gizmodo) / July 29, 2023
Independent studies has find that social media platforms aren’t necessarily the cause for polarizing users through algorithms and misinformation.
Social media algorithms have been a point of contention for lawmakers and regulators for several years over concerns that users were being brainwashed by the flood of misinformation promoted on their feeds. As it turns out, while the algorithms do impact the person’s experience on social media, four studies published on Thursday found it does not directly impact the person’s political beliefs.
Meta agreed to participate in the research in 2020, giving the study an additional level of credibility unlike those in the past which relied solely on data independently gathered from publicly available information and was based on a small number of users.
With Meta’s assistance, one of the four studies looked at data from 208 million Facebook users during the 2020 presidential election to discern if the misinformation displayed on their feeds had influenced their political stance. One study found that of those who read “untrustworthy” news stories, 97% identified as conservative and primarily viewed right-wing content.
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