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Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions
Mohsen Mosleh1,2,3, Qi Yang4, Tauhid Zaman5
1Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Nature
|October 2, 2024
Summary
Even with neutral policies, social media companies face accusations of political bias in combating misinformation. This study reveals that differing sharing habits of misinformation across political groups can create enforcement imbalances, not necessarily due to company bias.
Area of Science:
- Social Science
- Computational Social Science
- Political Science
Background:
- Technology companies face pressure to combat online misinformation.
- Enforcement of anti-misinformation policies often leads to accusations of political bias.
- Differential sharing of misinformation by political groups may cause enforcement asymmetries.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether differential sharing of misinformation by political groups leads to political asymmetries in policy enforcement.
- To determine if unbiased anti-misinformation policies can result in imbalanced enforcement.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of 9,000 politically active Twitter users during the US 2020 presidential election.
- Examination of 7 additional datasets from Twitter, Facebook, and survey experiments (2016-2023, 16 countries).
- Assessment of news quality using politically balanced laypeople and expert ratings.
Main Results:
- Pro-Trump/conservative users were more likely to be suspended and shared more low-quality news links.
- Conservatism correlated with low-quality news sharing across multiple platforms and countries.
- Higher likelihood of bots was estimated among conservative users.
Conclusions:
- Political asymmetries in the enforcement of anti-misinformation policies are expected, even with neutral policies.
- Observed enforcement imbalances do not necessarily imply bias by social media companies.
- Differential misinformation sharing patterns across political groups are a key factor in enforcement disparities.
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