Taking the Long View - July 27, 2023

Facebook releases first studies from 2020 research

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Welcome to the first edition of Taking the Long View. As part of the revamping of my newsletter, I’m on a new posting schedule where:

1. Wednesdays will be a longer analysis-type piece (if you missed it yesterday, I released my second quarterly trends report!)

2. Thursday’s will be the calendar of events where I try to highlight the events you might not know about but should pay attention to - both in the short and long term.

3. Sunday’s will be the stories I found interesting from the week.

I purposely waited to send this until 2 pm Eastern today because, since the day I started this newsletter, I’ve had one thing that’s consistently on my topics to keep an eye on section: Facebook’s 2020 election research. This is an unprecedented effort Facebook undertook with researchers to understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes and behaviors during the U.S. 2020 elections. And today, four of the studies were released.

You can read more about them here. Some of my key takeaways from them are:

1. This research is unprecedented - it's important to remember how unique it is for a platform to open up to researchers in this way voluntarily. This took forever to release because both Meta and the researchers wanted to do this the right way.

2. Results show the real trade-offs companies face - Making algorithmic changes to reduce certain types of content is not simple. They can reduce some good things and amplify bad ones and vice versa. So choices have to be made.

3. Polarization can't be studied in a vacuum - Many of the results for these four studies show that the changes made to people's feeds ultimately didn't affect their beliefs and opinions. People's political preferences are influenced by many factors - online and offline. Social media plays a role.  Bad actors can manipulate it. But social media alone is not to blame for all our woes.

4. Assumptions are being challenged - The research attempts to look at many assumed impacts of social media, from filter bubbles, reshares, and amplification of political content. For many of these assumptions, the research did not confirm these. More research is needed, but we must be careful about what we assume is happening versus what actually is.

5. The left and right have very different online experiences - This makes it challenging for platforms when there is an external expectation of being "fair" across the parties regarding how much content is actioned against or what is amplified because how and which content they consume is very different.

6. Algorithms continue to change - Since this research was conducted, Facebook has changed its algorithms to reduce the amount of political content and show more unconnected content. Algorithms are always changing, and so while this is a very helpful snapshot, it is just that - a snapshot. This is why transparency is important so researchers can continue to study how these changes affect what people read and believe.

7. There is work yet to be done - No company - especially Facebook - should take this research as an excuse not to do this work. I’m breathing a small sigh of relief, but the threats are still there; they are ever-changing, and social media still plays a role. 

A note on the Science cover. 

It’s disappointing that the cover reinforces the idea that social media causes echo chambers when it’s much more nuanced than that. Science describes the cover artwork this way: “They are siloed and face away from each other because the architecture of platforms may facilitate echo chambers.”

However, while the research does show the left and right have different online experiences, as Meta points out, “Nature’s summary of one paper states that the findings ‘challenge views about the extent to which the ‘echo chambers’ of social media drive political polarization.’”

Nuance matters - as this research shows.

Speaking of elections, make sure to check out this dream job from OpenAI: Elections Lead, Public Policy.

Calendar

🚨NEW 🚨

• August 3, 2023 - Amazon Q2 Earnings Call

• May 20, 2024 - Trump trial on classified docs

Topics to keep an eye on:

• Biden Administration POV on Texas and Florida laws

• Facebook 2020 election research 

• TV shows about Facebook - Doomsday Machine and second season of Super Pumped
  

• Mid-July - Code of practice on disinformation platform reports due

• August 3, 2023 - Apple Earnings Call

• August 10 - 13, 2023 - Defcon

• August 20, 2023 - Guatemala runoff

• August 21, 2023 - Meta responses to Oversight Board recommendations in Brazil election case due

• August 23, 2023 - Zimbabwe Election

• August-2023 – Eswatini election

• August 23, 2023 - First GOP Presidential Primary Debate

• August 28, 2023 - Meta response due to Oversight Board decision on Cambodian Prime Minister

• August - End of UK parliamentary session. Must pass Online Safety Bill by then.

• Mid-September: All Tech Is Human - Responsible Tech Summit NYC

• September 10, 2023: Russia to hold elections in four Ukrainian provinces

• September 19, 2023 - UN General Assembly high-level debate begins

• September 27-29, 2023: Athens Democracy Forum

• September 28-29, 2023 - Trust & Safety Research Conference 

• TBD September: Atlantic Festival

• TBD September: Unfinished Live

• September 2023 – Bhutan election

• September 2023 – Tuvalu election

• September 9, 2023 – Maldives election

• September 28-29, 2023 - The Atlantic Festival

• September 30, 2023 – Slovakia election

• September 2023 – Rwanda election

• October 2023 – Oman election

• October 2023 Poland election

• October 8, 2023 – Pakistan election

• October 10, 2023 – Liberia election

• October 14, 2023 – New Zealand election

• October 22, 2023 – Switzerland election

• October 29, 2023 – Argentina election

• October 2023 – Gabon election

• October 2023 – Ukraine election

• Nov 14 - Book Release, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz 

• November 15, 2023 - Aspen Cyber Summit

• November 20, 2023 – Marshall Islands election

• November 29, 2023 – Argentina election

• December 1-3, 2023: Build Peace 2023 Conference

• December 20, 2023 – Democratic Republic of the Congo election

• December 2023 –Togo election

• 2023 or 2024 – Peru election

• TBD – Dominica election

• TBD – Luxembourg election

• TBD – Myanmar election

• TBD – Spain election

• TBD – Gabon election

• TBD – Madagascar election

• TBD – Haiti election

• TBD – Libya election

• TBD – Singapore election

2024

• January 15, 2024 - Iowa GOP Caucus

• January 2024 – Bangladesh election 

• January 2024 – Finland election 

• January 13, 2024 – Taiwan election 

• February 4, 2024 – El Salvador election 

• February 4, 2024 – Mali election 

• February 14, 2024 – Indonesia election 

• February 25, 2024 – Senegal election 

• February 25, 2024 – Belarus election 

• March 8-16, 2024 - SXSW

• March 17, 2024 – Russia election 

• March 31, 2024 – Ukraine election 

• April 10, 2024 – South Korea election 

• April 2024 – Solomon Islands election 

• April 2024 – Maldives election 

• May 5, 2024 – Panama election 

• May 19, 2024 – Dominican Republic election 

• June 2024 – Mongolia election 

• June 6-9, 2024 - EU Parliament Elections

• July 7, 2024 – Mexico election 

• July 15 - 18, 2024 - Republican National Convention

• August 19 - 22, 2024 - Democratic Convention, Chicago

• October 27, 2024 – Uruguay election 

• October 2024 – Mozambique election 

• October 2024 – Chad election 

• November 2024 – Guinea Bissau election 

• November 2024 – Moldova election 

• November 2024 – Romania election 

• November 5, 2024 – United States of America election 

• November 12, 2024 – Palau election 

• December 2024 – Croatia election 

• TBD – Algeria election 

• TBD – Austria election 

• TBD – Belgium election 

• TBD – Botswana election 

• TBD – Burkina Faso election 

• TBD – Chad election 

• TBD – Comoros election 

• TBD – Croatia election 

• TBD – Dominica election 

• TBD – Egypt election 

• TBD – Ethiopia election 

• TBD – Georgia election 

• TBD – Ghana election 

• TBD – Iceland election 

• TBD – India election 

• TBD – Iran election 

• TBD – Jordan election 

• TBD – Kiribati election 

• TBD – Kuwait election 

• TBD – Lithuania election

• TBD – Madagascar election 

• TBD – Mauritania election

• TBD – Mauritius election

• TBD – Montenegro election 

• TBD – North Korea election

• TBD – North Macedonia election

• TBD – Romania election 

• TBD – Rwanda election

• TBD – San Marino election

• TBD – Slovakia election 

• TBD – South Africa election

• TBD – South Sudan election

• TBD – Syria election 

• TBD – Tunisia election

• TBD – United States of America election 

• TBD – Uzbekistan election

• TBD – Venezuela election