Meta, the company responsible for Facebook and Instagram, recently released the results of a series of studies that shed light on the public's preferences regarding the chronological feed.
This research, published in the renowned scientific journals Science and Nature and submitted for review by peers, explored an extensive data sample of more than 208 million users in the United States United.
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Additionally, more than 15,000 Facebook and Instagram users were invited to participate in a three-month experiment using the chronological feed.
The central focus of these studies was on understanding the impact of a recommendation feed, in which algorithms suggest content based on user preferences, and their relationship with political polarization, especially during the 2020 presidential elections in the United States United.
The results revealed that the introduction of the chronological feed had a limited impact on reducing political polarization and may even be less efficient for this purpose.
One of the findings that contributed to this conclusion is the fact that Facebook and Instagram users spent less time on these platforms during the test period, possibly moving to competitors that use algorithm-based feeds, such as TikTok and YouTube.
Interestingly, participants who used the chronological feed reported a 15.2% increase in political content and a 68.8% increase in posts coming from untrustworthy sources on their networks social.
This phenomenon is related to people's natural engagement with political issues during an electoral period. Although the algorithm-based feed has the ability to reduce these posts if the user does not show interest.
While these studies suggest that the chronological feed has not had a significant impact on reducing political polarization, they also highlight that social media continue to amplify polarization, something that had already been indicated in previous research.
The data also shows that users identified as “Conservatives” received a greater amount of fake news than “Liberals”, following the political divide in the United States.
The results of these studies indicate Meta's continued preference for algorithm-based feeds, despite some public preferences for the chronological feed.
The company has demonstrated that it is attentive to user demands, introducing features that reflect these preferences. In this case, the feed is based on personal tastes.
