- The study found no noticeable effect on political polarization among users.
- Users' knowledge about the election was not affected by the change in feed algorithm.
- Self-reported voter turnout remained unchanged despite significant differences in user experience.
Major changes in user experience
A comprehensive study of Facebook and Instagram feed algorithms during the 2020 US election shows that the algorithms have a significant impact on users' experience on the platforms, but little effect on their political attitudes and offline behaviors.
Researchers found that users with the chronological feed spent dramatically less time on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook, the extra time participants spent compared to average users decreased from 73 percent to 37 percent. On Instagram, it decreased from 107 percent to 84 percent.
The chronological feed also changed the type of content users were exposed to. On Facebook, the proportion of content from friends decreased by an average of 24 percentage points. Instead, the proportion of content from pages and groups increased.
The proportion of political content and content from unreliable sources increased in the chronological feed on both platforms. However, on Facebook, the proportion of uncivil content decreased by almost half.
No noticeable effects on political attitudes
Despite the major changes in user experience, researchers found no significant differences between the groups in terms of political polarization, knowledge about the election, or self-reported voter turnout.
The only noticeable difference was that users with the chronological feed on Facebook clicked somewhat more often on political news from partisan sources.
The study was conducted by researchers from several universities in collaboration with Meta. Over 20,000 users on each platform participated in the experiment, which lasted for three months during the 2020 election campaign.
The results suggest that social media algorithms may not be the main cause of phenomena such as increasing political polarization. Researchers suggest that other factors, both online and offline, may have greater significance for changes affecting democratic processes.
It's important to note that Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, took special measures during the 2020 election to reduce the spread of inflammatory content and disinformation on its platforms.
According to a separate analysis of another dataset from Meta, exposure to disinformation decreased during the period late 2020 and early 2021. This suggests that Meta's measures worked as intended.
This information complicates the interpretation of the study's results. The chronological feed may have appeared worse in comparison to the algorithmic feed than it would have if Meta had not implemented these changes.
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