“CrowdTangle is a monitoring tool that allows businesses to monitor how people interact with their posts.“begins by explaining Romain Badouard.”If you are a business and you have a page, you will be able to monitor how Internet users share or comment on your publications. It is a tool that has mainly been used by journalists to monitor Facebook, Instagram, to try to identify the emergence of false information, rumors, theories, conspiracy, in order to fight more effectively against their propagation..”
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What protection against fake news?
After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company Meta worked to deploy measures to more effectively moderate Internet users’ publications. At the time, Facebook was accused of manipulating personal data in favor of Donald Trump’s election. CrowdTangle, this tool initially developed by external companies, has therefore been integrated into the social network’s arsenal, in order to guarantee the veracity of the information. “For journalists, those who are looking to verify and counter conspiracy theories and false information, it was a very useful tool.” Explains the researcher.
However, this did not stop the group from removing it. Meta officially announced that it had removed CrowdTangle, due to its new “content library” with similar features, allowing academics to access data and thus study the phenomena of disinformation on its platform.
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Suspicions of an electoral boost
In a decisive year in terms of elections, particularly in the United States, the removal of the tool for combating disinformation raises questions. “The problem is temporality. We know that researchers will be able to conduct long-term studies that allow us to better understand these phenomena. But to effectively combat disinformation, we must act within minutes of its dissemination. And for that, we need tools that allow us to monitor live, and that journalists can use” expose Romain Badouard
