Berliner Boersenzeitung - Facebook's algorithm doesn't alter people's beliefs: research

EUR -
AED 4.293926
AFN 80.664061
ALL 97.673606
AMD 448.805894
ANG 2.092137
AOA 1072.008381
ARS 1473.86814
AUD 1.777194
AWG 2.107191
AZN 1.992006
BAM 1.954969
BBD 2.359897
BDT 142.119594
BGN 1.956648
BHD 0.440707
BIF 3438.141097
BMD 1.169038
BND 1.495564
BOB 8.093595
BRL 6.502078
BSD 1.168803
BTN 100.195413
BWP 15.604368
BYN 3.824874
BYR 22913.14706
BZD 2.347702
CAD 1.601524
CDF 3373.844424
CHF 0.930865
CLF 0.029161
CLP 1119.038818
CNY 8.380309
CNH 8.386416
COP 4674.983423
CRC 589.449462
CUC 1.169038
CUP 30.97951
CVE 110.795635
CZK 24.665189
DJF 207.761914
DKK 7.461795
DOP 70.497539
DZD 151.705573
EGP 57.855667
ERN 17.535572
ETB 160.045846
FJD 2.621276
FKP 0.861628
GBP 0.866082
GEL 3.16855
GGP 0.861628
GHS 12.162504
GIP 0.861628
GMD 83.590727
GNF 10119.194341
GTQ 8.978184
GYD 244.526067
HKD 9.176307
HNL 30.804608
HRK 7.533988
HTG 153.404797
HUF 399.5543
IDR 18972.787189
ILS 3.894218
IMP 0.861628
INR 100.328609
IQD 1531.439931
IRR 49231.122092
ISK 142.400984
JEP 0.861628
JMD 186.90056
JOD 0.828894
JPY 172.334969
KES 151.39488
KGS 102.232832
KHR 4700.702671
KMF 492.340851
KPW 1052.173978
KRW 1612.291055
KWD 0.357481
KYD 0.973978
KZT 610.670442
LAK 25169.39103
LBP 104721.265739
LKR 351.480608
LRD 234.977068
LSL 20.949609
LTL 3.451866
LVL 0.70714
LYD 6.307006
MAD 10.52427
MDL 19.78759
MGA 5178.839256
MKD 61.56729
MMK 2453.70284
MNT 4194.046924
MOP 9.450302
MRU 46.415189
MUR 53.168296
MVR 18.007558
MWK 2030.039055
MXN 21.79146
MYR 4.971339
MZN 74.772119
NAD 20.949604
NGN 1786.89858
NIO 42.962591
NOK 11.839321
NPR 160.312861
NZD 1.945479
OMR 0.449493
PAB 1.168808
PEN 4.145998
PGK 4.822327
PHP 66.037214
PKR 332.445259
PLN 4.266015
PYG 9058.149949
QAR 4.256005
RON 5.081579
RSD 117.102724
RUB 91.189371
RWF 1676.400657
SAR 4.384424
SBD 9.733981
SCR 16.480784
SDG 702.011685
SEK 11.176827
SGD 1.496958
SHP 0.91868
SLE 26.307644
SLL 24514.149043
SOS 668.109564
SRD 43.49699
STD 24196.728708
SVC 10.226653
SYP 15199.779355
SZL 20.949595
THB 37.935718
TJS 11.296147
TMT 4.103324
TND 3.393762
TOP 2.738009
TRY 46.955356
TTD 7.940625
TWD 34.1849
TZS 3039.499492
UAH 48.831645
UGX 4189.219426
USD 1.169038
UYU 47.259913
UZS 14794.17774
VES 133.584256
VND 30528.845862
VUV 140.012408
WST 3.21431
XAF 655.672706
XAG 0.030416
XAU 0.000348
XCD 3.159384
XDR 0.812965
XOF 655.250067
XPF 119.331742
YER 282.732293
ZAR 20.963079
ZMK 10522.750076
ZMW 27.056616
ZWL 376.429796
  • CMSC

    0.0900

    22.314

    +0.4%

  • CMSD

    0.0250

    22.285

    +0.11%

  • RBGPF

    0.0000

    69.04

    0%

  • SCS

    0.0400

    10.74

    +0.37%

  • RELX

    0.0300

    53

    +0.06%

  • RIO

    -0.1400

    59.33

    -0.24%

  • GSK

    0.1300

    41.45

    +0.31%

  • NGG

    0.2700

    71.48

    +0.38%

  • BP

    0.1750

    30.4

    +0.58%

  • BTI

    0.7150

    48.215

    +1.48%

  • BCC

    0.7900

    91.02

    +0.87%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.13

    +0.15%

  • VOD

    0.0100

    9.85

    +0.1%

  • BCE

    -0.0600

    22.445

    -0.27%

  • RYCEF

    0.1000

    12

    +0.83%

  • AZN

    -0.1200

    73.71

    -0.16%

Facebook's algorithm doesn't alter people's beliefs: research
Facebook's algorithm doesn't alter people's beliefs: research / Photo: JOSH EDELSON - AFP/File

Facebook's algorithm doesn't alter people's beliefs: research

Do social media echo chambers deepen political polarization, or simply reflect existing social divisions?

Text size:

A landmark research project that investigated Facebook around the 2020 US presidential election published its first results Thursday, finding that, contrary to assumption, the platform's often criticized content-ranking algorithm doesn't shape users' beliefs.

The work is the product of a collaboration between Meta -- the parent company of Facebook and Instagram -- and a group of academics from US universities who were given broad access to internal company data, and signed up tens of thousands of users for experiments.

The academic team wrote four papers examining the role of the social media giant in American democracy, which were published in the scientific journals Science and Nature.

Overall, the algorithm was found to be "extremely influential in people's on-platform experiences," said project leaders Talia Stroud of the University of Texas at Austin and Joshua Tucker, of New York University.

In other words, it heavily impacted what the users saw, and how much they used the platforms.

"But we also know that changing the algorithm for even a few months isn't likely to change people's political attitudes," they said, as measured by users' answers on surveys after they took part in three-month-long experiments that altered how they received content.

The authors acknowledged this conclusion might be because the changes weren't in place for long enough to make an impact, given that the United States has been growing more polarized for decades.

Nevertheless, "these findings challenge popular narratives blaming social media echo chambers for the problems of contemporary American democracy," wrote the authors of one of the papers, published in Nature.

- 'No silver bullet' -

Facebook's algorithm, which uses machine-learning to decide which posts rise to the top of users' feeds based on their interests, has been accused of giving rise to "filter bubbles" and enabling the spread of misinformation.

Researchers recruited around 40,000 volunteers via invitations placed on their Facebook and Instagram feeds, and designed an experiment where one group was exposed to the normal algorithm, while the other saw posts listed from newest to oldest.

Facebook originally used a reverse chronological system and some observers have suggested that switching back to it will reduce social media's harmful effects.

The team found that users in the chronological feed group spent around half the amount of time on Facebook and Instagram compared to the algorithm group.

On Facebook, those in the chronological group saw more content from moderate friends, as well as more sources with ideologically mixed audiences.

But the chronological feed also increased the amount of political and untrustworthy content seen by users.

Despite the differences, the changes did not cause detectable changes in measured political attitudes.

"The findings suggest that chronological feed is no silver bullet for issues such as political polarization," said coauthor Jennifer Pan of Stanford.

- Meta welcomes findings -

In a second paper in Science, the same team researched the impact of reshared content, which constitutes more than a quarter of content that Facebook users see.

Suppressing reshares has been suggested as a means to control harmful viral content.

The team ran a controlled experiment in which a group of Facebook users saw no changes to their feeds, while another group had reshared content removed.

Removing reshares reduced the proportion of political content seen, resulting in reduced political knowledge -- but again did not impact downstream political attitudes or behaviors.

A third paper, in Nature, probed the impact of content from "like-minded" users, pages, and groups in their feeds, which the researchers found constituted a majority of what the entire population of active adult Facebook users see in the US.

But in an experiment involving over 23,000 Facebook users, suppressing like-minded content once more had no impact on ideological extremity or belief in false claims.

A fourth paper, in Science, did however confirm extreme "ideological segregation" on Facebook, with politically conservative users more siloed in their news sources than liberals.

What's more, 97 percent of political news URLs on Facebook rated as false by Meta's third-party fact checking program -- which AFP is part of -- were seen by more conservatives than liberals.

Meta welcomed the overall findings.

They "add to a growing body of research showing there is little evidence that social media causes harmful... polarization or has any meaningful impact on key political attitudes, beliefs or behaviors," said Nick Clegg, the company's president of global affairs.

(A.Berg--BBZ)