Science Editors Raise New Doubts on Meta's Claims It Isn't Polarizing

Meta Platforms' claims that Facebook doesn't polarize Americans came under new doubt as the journal Science raised questions about a prominent research paper the tech giant has cited to support its position. WSJ: In an editorial Thursday, Science said that Meta's emergency efforts to calm its platforms in the wake of the 2020 election may have swayed the conclusions of the paper, which the journal published in July 2023. The editorial, titled "Context matters in social media," was prompted by a letter that Science also published presenting new criticism of the paper. Because the study of Facebook's algorithms relied on data provided by Meta when it was undertaking extraordinary efforts to restrain incendiary political content, the letter's authors argue that the paper may have overstated the case that social media algorithms didn't contribute to political polarization.

Such criticisms of peer-reviewed research often appear below papers in academic journals, but Science's editors felt their editorial was needed to more prominently caveat this original paper's conclusions, said Holden Thorp, Science's editor in chief. "It was incumbent on us to come up with a way somehow that people who would come to the paper would know of these concerns,â Thorp said in an interview. While no correction was warranted, he said, "There's an election coming up, and we care about people citing this paper." Meta said it had been transparent with researchers about its actions during the time of the study, and the company and its research partners say it had no control over the Science paper's conclusions. Meta called debates of the sort aired on Thursday as part of the research process.

Software is malleable

[memory_register]

Facebook could be making the platform appear benign when researchers use it, when in reality it is very polarizing. Facebook measures success in minutes on their platform. Polarizing content triggers emotions that keep you plugged in.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Is Facebook creating the polarization?

Or is it just profiting by providing narrow forums to take advantage of preexisting polarization?

Polls show that views haven't changed that much. For instance, there has always been strong opposition to immigration. It's just become more of a partisan issue compared to 20 years ago, when GWB advocated moderate immigration reform. Few Republican politicians would do that today. Same with abortion. There used to be pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. That's les

Re:

[Darinbob]

Things have also become simplistic. Decades of claiming that issues are complicated have upset the low information voters who just want a big wall that is easily climbable. Not necessarily new either, the disgraced conservative congressman (who claimed he's the inspiration for top gun) put on the shocked and amazed face that they were putting up a double wall on the border near San Diego when clearly every moron knows it should be a triple wall. The shaving blades theory of walls. Ie, always ratchet up th

Re:

[test321]

Polarization is related with negative views (of the other party; of the party in power). One can construct different definitions of a Political Polarization Index and monitor it along time.
* Europe, 2022: "Measuring partisan polarization with partisan differences in satisfaction with the government: the introduction of a new comparative approach" https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com] (open access)
* USA, 2023: "The 2023 Polarization Index - A Holistic Analysis of the State of U.S. Political Strife" https://www.p [pellcenter.org]

Tl;Dr

[locater16]

Meta temporarily cut obvious lies on it's platforms for the last US presidential election, and then immediately rolled back all the changes afterwards.