The political impact of social media has been grossly overrated

Finally the truth is coming out.  A series of new research papers, surveyed in the NYT, present a pretty sobering reality.  Here is just one excerpt:

One of the studies was titled “How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes?” In that research, which included more than 23,000 Facebook users and 21,000 Instagram users, researchers replaced the algorithms with reverse chronological feeds, which means people saw the most recent posts first instead of posts that were largely tailored to their interests.

Yet people’s “polarization,” or political knowledge, did not change, the researchers found. In the academics’ surveys, people did not report shifting their behaviors, such as signing more online petitions or attending more political rallies, after their feeds were changed.

And:

In another paper, researchers found that reducing the amount of content in 23,000 Facebook users’ feeds that was posted by “like-minded” connections did not measurably alter the beliefs or political polarization of those who participated.

“These findings challenge popular narratives blaming social media echo chambers for the problems of contemporary American democracy,” the study’s authors said.

In a fourth study that looked at 27,000 Facebook and Instagram users, people said their knowledge of political news fell when their ability to reshare posts was taken away in an experiment. Removing the reshare button ultimately did not change people’s beliefs or opinions, the paper concluded.

This entire episode is one of the more egregious instances of an anti-business, anti-tech falsehood taking root and being repeated endlessly.  Of course, some of us having been saying this for years — the basic point is not hard to grasp if you are someone who…writes for a public audience…