Far-left and far-right misinformation on Facebook gets six times more likes and shares than factual posts, a study of thousands of pages has revealed - after the social media giant banned the researchers from the platform.
The peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France combed through 2,551 Facebook pages from August 2020 to January 2021.
It found that misinformation on both sides of the political spectrum spreads faster than facts from authoritative sources like the World Health Organization and corporate news outlets like CNN.
The study was released after Facebook shut down the personal accounts of the researchers, who were looking into data for a different study about political ads before the most recent one was released.
Facebook claimed that the researchers were 'using unauthorized means to access and collect data' in violation of their terms and a 2019 data-privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
But Samuel Levine, acting director of the FTC´s consumer protection bureau, hit back saying a consent decree allows Facebook to create exceptions to data collection restrictions 'for good-faith research in the public interest.'
The academics say the company is attempting to exert control on research that paints it in a negative light.
The NYU researchers found that 40 percent of far-right sources and 10 percent of center or left-leaning sources promote misinformation.
They also said misinformation accounts for 68 percent of engagement with far-right sources, compared to just 36 percent for far-left sources.
All fake news, left or right-leaning, spreads at six times the rate of facts, a new study says
NYU researcher Laura Edelson says Facebook previously cut off access to an account she was using for a different study on political ads, claiming her data mining violated FTC rules
The study is likely to fuel claims that Facebook has widened the political divide in the US by reinforcing users' pre-existing views and sectioning them off into silos.
Company founder Mark Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress numerous times, testifying on issues of privacy and abuse of data.
The research 'helps add to the growing body of evidence that, despite a variety of mitigation efforts, misinformation has found a comfortable home — and an engaged audience — on Facebook,' Rebekah Tromble told the Washington Post.
Tromble is director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, who reviewed the NYU study’s findings.
The study divided news publishers by their political leaning based on information from NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check.
It found that posts on Facebook pages for left-leaning sites like Occupy Democrats and right-leaning sources like Dan Bongino and Breitbart are equally as likely to travel farther than posts from more centrist sources.
'What we do find is that these ecosystems are just fundamentally different,' NYU researcher Laura Edelson told CNN. 'The far-right
