The US elections are less than five months away, and the public has less visibility than ever into political messaging on Facebook and Instagram.
In August, Meta is shutting down CrowdTangle, a popular social media monitoring tool used to track misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. The company says its replacement, the Meta Content Library (MCL), is a better tool for researchers.
But a joint investigation by Proof News, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute found that Meta’s replacement tool is less transparent and accessible than CrowdTangle. On eleven key topics, Meta’s new tool has fewer features than CrowdTangle. And researchers say the process of getting access to the tool is cumbersome and slow—and some journalists can’t access it at all.
I wonder if CrowdTangle was effective anyway. Maybe it did not work 100% reliable and could be misused itself? Especially because then Meta is in a position where they control what is a misinformation is or not. I think this is much more scary than any misinformation itself, because it takes the responsibility to judge from individuals and gives the company control over what misinformation means.