[guy_ro]

A counter-point to this is that studies show polarization has also fallen in some countries over the past years - including ones where social media (Facebook or otherwise) is popular. Studies also show some of the most polarized segments in the US to be the older population, which uses social media less. We definitely have work to do, but this suggests there are many factors at play.

[mola]

You have an interest in the outcome of the research, why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly? Your track record is terrible. The fact you are throwing around dubious research as facts is crazy.

I'm sorry, but really, there's no reason to believe a word a you say.

You get paid from Facebook, Facebook lied again and again, how on earth do you expect people to take you seriously?

Your job and title is to give FB the optics of caring about integrity, and was invented as part of FB PR in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre.

The amount of cynicism is just mind boggling.

[rat9988]

>why should we trust you to conduct or fund it properly?

You are welcome to conduct research or fund it. You can even help current research by criticizing their research in its substance, or engage yourself politically (at least by voting) so we can have more and better research about the topic.

[mola]

I do, but that's irrelevant to the fact the corporate funded research is used to muddy the waters and make reality even less accessible than it is.

It's not the lack of research that's a problem, it's the weaponization of research.

[thu2111]

Outside of actual weapons research, research can't be "weaponised" and academia is rife with incredibly strong political biases. Political bias in academia is so severe that there is actually an entire foundation devoted to trying to combat it (the Heterodox Academy).

Your posts sound like you believe corporations shouldn't ever do research and worse, that academics don't have any interest in the outcomes of their own work. But that's nonsense, of course they do. They want to publish papers, they want their research findings to be novel and widely cited, they want to build a reputation. They have all kinds of self-interested incentives that act against producing accurate research findings; hence the replication crisis!

[dkersten]

So, what’s the solution?

How do you think Facebook should deal with this? If Facebook-funded research is suspect and nobody else is able or willing to fund it (why should someone else fund soemthing for Facebooks potential benefit, when Facebook are rich, and if someone else is funding research for Facebooks detriment, then I would say its equally suspect), how should such research be funded then?

How can you show results of the research in a way that you wouldn’t consider as “weaponized”?

I’m not a fan of Facebook and am quite suspicious of them, but I’m also not sure what they can do in this particular situation that we would find satisfactory,

[beachy]

That is interesting. My take would be that the older population may spend less time on social media (who can compete with a 20 year old with a phone welded to their hand anyway), but that a disproportionate number of these seniors are babes in the wood where technology is concerned, and are more amazed by, believing of, and susceptible to the influence of social media than youngsters who have grown up along with those social media platforms.

Would be very interesting to learn about these countries where polarization has fallen if you have links to hand.

[takeda]

Except now the people that use Facebook the most are grandparents (i.e. the demographic you mentioned that is most polarized). Facebook is no longer cool as it was 15 years ago.

[guy_ro]

https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669

[disgruntledphd2]

A freely available version of this paper can be found here: https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/cross-polar.pdf

[empressplay]

My experience on Facebook suggests almost the opposite - my younger friends tend to hold partisan opinions much more steadfastly than the older ones.

[charlesarthur]

The NBER paper that you point to in a subsequent comment doesn't have any detail on the popularity of social media; we explicitly can't make any determination on whether social media is having an effect there because the data is missing. If, say, Facebook were to provide external researchers with data about the growth in Facebook use - users, median time spent on site, average time spent, SD of time spent - for a number of years, that would help to identify whether social media has a role in such polarisation.

Although it's trivial to say "I see a lot of polarisation on social media, therefore it's worse than it was", a satellite-view paper like that NBER one gives zero insight into the role of social media, partly because the data isn't provided, but also because it doesn't examine what effects there might be on smaller groups within the population who are, say, heavy social media users.

I think the most useful thing Facebook could do would be to make more information available to researchers, rather than pointing to research which hasn't been able to use data and claim that helps exonerate Facebook.

[ghouse]

Which studies show this?

[ren01r]

Please share the studies which show the decline in polarisation, really interested in reading them.

[tripzilch]

I'm really curious which countries these are. Please do provide a reference to these studies.

[BubRoss]

Are you really trying to take credit for a flimsy correlation between facebook usage and polarization (in some countries, though you didn't say which ones or how many compared to other heavy use countries)

[meowface]

I think it's the reverse. They're trying to distance themselves from the notion that Facebook is the primary factor in what's polarizing (certain) people.