PerspectiveResearchers Trying to Prevent a Repeat of 2016's Election Misinformation in 2020 Are Struggling Thanks to a Lack of Data from Facebook

Facebook’s promises of sharing detailed amounts of data with researchers and academics to enable them to study and flag disinformation on the site ahead of the 2020 campaign seem to have fallen short, according to a new report from The New York Times.

Mary Hanbury writers in Business Insider that in April 2018, the social networking giant outlined its plans to provide data to academics to “help people better understand the broader impact of social media on democracy — as well as improve our work to protect the integrity of elections.”

But 18 months in these researchers say that they haven’t been given nearly as much data as they were promised and it’s preventing them from doing their research.

According to The Times, seven nonprofit groups that are funding the research efforts have threatened to end their involvement because of the lack of data. 

Hanbury notes that in October 2017, Facebook admitted that 126 million Americans had likely seen Russian misinformation over a two-year period up till August 2017.

“Disinformation is still rife on the platform and is continuing to grow,” she writes. “Last week, research from the University of Oxford showed Facebook was the number one global platform of choice for political parties and governments to spread fake news.”