During Australia’s recent federal election, Chris Cooper’s team tracked how anti-trans hate speech and misinformation surged on social media, and in particular Facebook.
They found content that actively misgendered trans people was attracting significant engagement, and even growing followers for some influencers and groups intent on spreading this message.
To do this work, Cooper’s Reset Australia — a group that aims to hold big tech accountable — used a little-known tool called CrowdTangle.
Owned by Meta’s Facebook, the free service operates something like a search engine.
It helps academics, journalists and civil society groups dig into what’s taking place on Facebook and Instagram, and allows them to identify trending posts and monitor the dissemination of disinformation.
But in June, Bloomberg reported that Facebook plans to eventually pull support for CrowdTangle.
Already some local CrowdTangle users have found the platform increasingly buggy and producing inconsistent…
Read Full Story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-08-16/facebook-crowdtangle-meta-disinformation-transparency/101325544
