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| Meta plans to shut down its tool for tracking popular posts |
Bloomberg reports that Meta is reducing support for the CrowdTangle tool, which researchers use to track the spread of viral stories on Facebook, including those that spread misinformation, and is working on plans to shut it down.
Removing the CrowdTangle will remove access that people like Kevin Rose have used to display data showing meaningful interactions with right-wing news sources on Facebook, listing findings that sometimes seem to contradict official Facebook reports.
In a July article for the New York Times, Ross detailed an internal data war over how much information companies should release that Brandon Silverman, CrowdTangle founder and CEO, said he should share more than data. But Silverman left the company in October 2021.
According to Meta, CrowdTangle is a public information tool on Facebook that helps editors, journalists, researchers, and fact-checkers track, analyze and report on what is happening on social media. It does this by making public content from popular Pages, groups, Instagram accounts, and Reddit subgroups more discoverable. The sharing data in this content can easily be sorted broadly. CrowdTangle does not track content from regular Facebook accounts.
In a tweet on Twitter, Facebook's News Feed Director, John Hegeman, said Rose's daily list of the 10 most important posts on Facebook pages in the US, arranged by total shares through CrowdTangle data, showed subtle interactions. He sees. Most people are on Facebook.
The best way to prove this, he says, may be to use the data to show which messages have the most reach. However, the company usually does not share this data directly.
When Facebook acquired CrowdTangle in 2016, he said the tool helped publishers showcase important stories. It also helps you measure their social presence and identify influencers. CrowdTangle tracks the performance of Stories on other networks, including Twitter and Instagram.
Meta plans to close the CrowdTangle tool
A Bloomberg report cites how voter advocacy group Common Cause used the tool to find misinformation reported to Twitter and Facebook to remove it in real time during multiple state primaries.
The report states that Meta began the official process of removing the tool in February. However, it has been temporarily suspended due to the European Union's Digital Services Act.
The law aims to make transparent how Facebook and other platforms amplify divisive content.
The company is currently working on a plan to shut down the tool, with Facebook engineers dedicated to the task. But Meta spokeswoman Erin McPeak told Bloomberg that CrowdTangle will survive this year's midterm elections. She said the meta-program offers researchers a more valuable tool.
Meta dissolved CrowdTangle in the summer of 2021 when dozens of its employees resigned or took new positions elsewhere in the company.
The company also withdrew a $40,000 grant to help two research partners use CrowdTangle data to understand the public debate around the coronavirus pandemic.
No new features have been added to CrowdTangle for over 16 months. Prior to dissolving CrowdTangle, the team rolled out new updates several times a month and major new products every six months. Researchers fear that product instability will be exacerbated during major events as the computing burden increases.