A new study by a group funded by George Soros used a flawed methodology to claim that Facebook failed to prevent more than 10 billion views of so-called “misinformation”.
The study used Facebook’s fact checkers, which have been found to be inaccurate and biased, to create a list of “misinformation”. It then jumped through some tangled hoops to get to attention grabbing 10.1 billion avoidable views of so-called “misinformation”. The group behind the study wouldn’t even publish the lists of posts or pages used in the study, as the study focuses on the Facebook algorithm. Withholding such information prevents the study from being objectively and thoroughly reviewed, which creates the appearance of a pseudoscientific study that does not stand up to scrutiny.
The study with the hyperbolic title “Facebook: From Election to Insurrection – How Facebook Failed the Voters and Almost Set Democracy on Fire” came from a right-wing group called Avaaz. The group was co-founded by George Soros-funded left-wing activist groups Res Publica and MoveOn.org. Avaaz has provided funding for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the Green New Deal Coalition, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and other left-wing groups, according to Influence Watch. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the company donated more than $ 390,000 to co-founder Tom Periello’s failed campaign for the governor of Virginia.
The study design uses flawed data and lacks transparency
For the study, Avaaz first compiled a list of 343 posts that were considered misinformation based on Facebook’s fact checkers. According to the study, only “content that was clearly identified as ‘wrong’ or ‘misleading’ or that fell into these categories was used”.
Avaaz did not respond to a request for the full list of specific descriptions at the time of publication, although the report indicated that a list would be made available upon request. The list of the 343 papers used in the study was not made available for review.
Next, Avaaz identified Facebook Pages where at least three of the identified misinformation posts were shared during the year-long study period, with at least two of which were within 90 days of each other. Pages that deleted or corrected the so-called fact-checked articles were not included in the study.
The pages were then ranked by the number of total interactions (comments, approvals, or responses to posts) and the top 100 pages were used in the study. According to the report, the top 100 pages shared an average of 8 so-called “misinformation” postings during the one-year study period.
The list of 100 pages used for the study was not made available for objective review as Avaaz claimed to keep the focus “strictly on the role of the social media platform, not acting earlier on its.” Structurally repair algorithms “. The study found that 60 of the 100 pages used in the report “slanted to the right, 32 slanted to the left, and eight had no clear political affiliation,” showing a clear trend in the study.
The study used Facebook’s fact checkers to identify misinformation posts. There are many problems with fact checkers. Facebook’s fact checkers are all part of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) of the liberal Poynter Institute, which received $ 1.3 million from liberal billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. A December 2020 report also revealed that one of the certifiers working at IFCN was a highly partisan Clinton supporter. USA Today reportedly used college interns to help verify the facts.
Recent reports on the Media Research Center’s CensorTrack.org show completely irrelevant fact-checking of some posts. PolitiFact and FactCheck.org “review subjective things like political rhetoric.” Using fact-checking as the basis for the Avaaz study provides a shaky foundation.
People behind the study are biased
Avaaz stated on its website that its stated goal is “to organize citizens of all nations to bridge the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.” Despite these claims, it has supported the Green New Deal, Palestinian statehood, and other deeply divisive, radical left-wing causes.
Along with the Soros funding behind the co-founding organizations, Influence Watch reported that employees previously worked for left-wing organizations such as the Ford Foundation, Ashoka and Amnesty International. Avaaz co-founder Tom Periello is the Executive Director of Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Avaaz’s co-founder, president and CEO Ricken Patel previously worked for leftist organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and Res Publica.
The study claimed to have tried to prevent “misinformation” from spreading. However, the one-on-one campaigns run by Avaaz are a case study of misinformation. A “victory” advertised on his “Highlights” page calls Rupert Murdoch “the most powerful and dangerous media baron in the world who is abusing his vast empire to pocket politicians and advance a hateful and divisive political agenda. ” A campaign to “protect half of our planet” declared that “Every insect on the planet is on track to be wiped outand causes a breakdown of life on earth – including us! ” [Emphasis theirs.]
The estimated 10.1 billion views is a fabricated number using the Unsound methodology
The summary of the study began with an attention-grabbing statement: “Facebook could have prevented 10.1 billion estimated hits for top-performing sites where misinformation was repeatedly exchanged.” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone made a statement on the report, in which he said:
“Avaaz uses a flawed methodology to make people believe that all of the content on this page is problematic just because a page contains fact-checked content.”
Stone’s statement highlighted part of the problem with using the 10.1 billion number. It contained everything these 100 pages had in common. The study admitted that the sites shared only an average of eight of the identified misinformation posts over the course of a year. Avaaz assumed that Facebook should have throttled the entire content of these pages due to the average of eight posts identified as misinformation.
The method by which such a conspicuous number was obtained was questionable. To see how much engagement could have been prevented if Facebook had taken action in March, the platform’s authors reported problematic sites. The study then tracked the percentage reduction in engagement after Facebook took action against some pages in October. In calculating the potential reduction in engagement for all pages using the percent reduction in throttled pages, it is assumed that the engagement for the throttled pages was the same as for all 100 pages. Such an assumption is unlikely to be true, but it cannot be verified without the list of pages used.
After tabulating the number of avoidable interactions across all posts, Avaaz turned to even more questionable methods of determining the number of avoidable post views. Since Facebook does not report the number of views of text or image posts, Avaaz investigated the number of views of video postings for the 100 tracked pages. When comparing the number of video views to the number of video interactions, the study calculated that each video interaction corresponded to 19.74 video views. The study authors then used the same ratio to calculate the number of avoidable post views and helped the study authors hit the 10.1 billion figure. This method assumed that engagement for video posts was the same as for image and text posts. Internet marketers know that such an ambiguity is likely to be imprecise at best. Without control over such variables, the data presented will be incorrect. The study itself was both biased and flawed.
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