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Social media algorithms can curb misinformation, but do they?

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arxiv 2409.18393 v1 pith:LMQJD4SF submitted 2024-09-27 cs.SI cs.CY

Chhandak Bagchi , Filippo Menczer , Jennifer Lundquist , Monideepa Tarafdar , Anthony Paik , Przemyslaw A. Grabowicz This is my paper · ORCID
classification cs.SIcs.CY
keywords feedmisinformationalgorithmfacebooknewsemergencypoliticalaccount
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abstract

A recent article in $\textit{Science}$ by Guess et al. estimated the effect of Facebook's news feed algorithm on exposure to misinformation and political information among Facebook users. However, its reporting and conclusions did not account for a series of temporary emergency changes to Facebook's news feed algorithm in the wake of the 2020 U.S. presidential election that were designed to diminish the spread of voter-fraud misinformation. Here, we demonstrate that these emergency measures systematically reduced the amount of misinformation in the control group of the study, which was using the news feed algorithm. This issue may have led readers to misinterpret the results of the study and to conclude that the Facebook news feed algorithm used outside of the study period mitigates political misinformation as compared to reverse chronological feed.

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