We’re dealing with descriptive data here, so we can’t establish a clear causal relationship. We expect that this is driven largely by selection effects - more tolerant people are the ones more likely to use Facebook 10/15 - ThreadSky

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osamet.bsky.social • 86 days ago

We’re dealing with descriptive data here, so we can’t establish a clear causal relationship. We expect that this is driven largely by selection effects - more tolerant people are the ones more likely to use Facebook

10/15

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osamet.bsky.social•86 days ago

But the positive relationship holds even controlling for demographic characteristics generally associated with tolerance. It suggests that Facebook’s power to dramatically reshape attitudes might be more limited than we’d expect

11/15

osamet.bsky.social•86 days ago

This adds to the growing body of research exploring the effects of platforms like Facebook, incl recent experimental evidence that found relatively limited capacity to drive polarization. See here: https://nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06297-w

12/15

osamet.bsky.social•86 days ago

Our findings complicate prevailing narratives about the origin and activation of intolerance in Myanmar (and possibly elsewhere). They suggest that the centrality of Facebook to negative political and social developments might be overstated

13/15

osamet.bsky.social•86 days ago

Important to note that our findings do NOT absolve Facebook for harms it *has* caused through failures of moderation and safety.

But if we’re going to respond to problems effectively, it’s critical we understand *how* those harms manifest – not rest on assumptions

14/15

osamet.bsky.social•86 days ago

A lot more details in the article itself (which is Open Access!), including about the Myanmar context, the specific questions about tolerance we asked, and what this all means for assessing Facebook’s place in a changing world

Read more here: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2024.2333408

15/END

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