New research looking at Facebook in the run-up to the 2020 election finds scant evidence to suggest that social media algorithms are to blame for political polarization, extremism, or belief in misinformation. The findings are part of a project in which Meta opened its internal data to academic researchers. The results of this collaboration will be publicized in 16 papers, the first four of which were just published in the journals Science and Nature.
One of the studies found that switching users from an algorithmic feed to a reverse chronological feed—something suggested by many social media foes as the responsible thing to do—actually led to users seeing more political content and more potential misinformation. The change did lead to seeing less content "classified as uncivil or containing slur words" and more content "from moderate friends." But none of these shifts made a significant difference in terms of users' political knowledge, attitudes, or polarization levels.
