Washington: CrowdTangle, a digital platform seen to be essential for tracking viral lies, will be discontinued by Facebook owner Meta during a significant election year. Researchers fear this may interfere with efforts to identify the anticipated deluge of political misinformation.
Less than three months before the US election, on August 14, the tech giant announces that CrowdTangle would no longer be accessible. The Palo Alto corporation intends to replace it with a new tool that news organizations won’t have much access to and that academics claim lacks the same capability.
CrowdTangle has been a game-changer for years, providing journalists and researchers with vital real-time insight into the propagation of hate speech and conspiracy theories on prominent Meta-owned platforms, including as Facebook and Instagram.
In light of the fact that dozens of countries are holding elections this year, when bad actors are more likely than ever to promote false narratives, the decision to remove the monitoring tool, which experts believe is consistent with a trend in the digital industry to pull back transparency and security safeguards, is extremely damaging.
Melanie Smith, director of research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, stated that “cutting off access to CrowdTangle will severely limit independent oversight of harms in a year where almost half of the global population is expected to vote in elections.”
“It is a serious setback for the transparency of social media platforms.” The new Content Library that Meta plans to replace CrowdTangle with is still in the development stage. Some in the IT sector, such as former CrowdTangle CEO Brandon Silverman, have claimed that this tool is currently ineffective as a replacement, particularly in elections when a rise in fake information powered by artificial intelligence is anticipated.
“It is a serious setback for the transparency of social media platforms.” The new Content Library that Meta plans to replace CrowdTangle with is still in the development stage. Some in the IT sector, such as former CrowdTangle CEO Brandon Silverman, have claimed that this tool is currently ineffective as a replacement, particularly in elections when a rise in fake information powered by artificial intelligence is anticipated.
