Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
This is Platformer, a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer. Sign up here.
Today let’s talk about some of the most rigorous research we’ve seen to date on the subject of social networks’ influence on politics — and the predictably intense debate around how to interpret it.
I.
Even before 2021, when Frances Haugen rocked the company by releasing thousands of documents detailing its internal research and debates, Meta has faced frequent calls to cooperate with academics on social science. I’ve argued that doing so is ultimately in the company’s interest, as the absence of good research on social networks has bred strong convictions around the world that social networks are…