Mar 12, 2021 12:30:00

'Split Screen' where you can see how the content recommended on Facebook differs depending on the political party, gender, and age.

SNS such as Facebook and Twitter introduce posts and groups suitable for individual users according to the algorithm, but it is

pointed out that this mechanism is accelerating the division of people. The Markup , a non-profit organization in the United States, has released a tool called 'Split Screen ' that allows you to see how the content displayed in Facebook feeds differs depending on the political party, gender, and age.

Split Screen: How Different Are Americans' Facebook Feeds? – The Markup
https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/03/11/split-screen

Introducing “Split Screen” – The Markup
https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/03/11/introducing-split-screen

How We Built a Facebook Feed Viewer – The Markup
https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/03/11/how-we-built-a-facebook-feed-viewer

Facebook delivers personalized news, ads, posts, and recommended groups to 2.7 billion users. This mechanism is important for attracting users to the platform, but it has also been criticized for blocking information that each user does not want to see, creating a filter bubble , and accelerating the polarization of people. However, it's not easy to know what feeds are being delivered to users who have different interests.

So The Markup is a Faceook feed delivered between December 1, 2020 and March 11, 2021 as part of a project called 'Citizen Browser' for nearly 2,600 Facebook users in the United States. Information was collected. To protect the privacy of participants, The Markup removes personally identifiable information such as usernames, friend names, and photos, and instead uses self-reported age, gender, race, place of residence, and political parties. The users were grouped by.

Based on the data collected in this way, the 'Split Screen' shows how the Facebook feed looks different depending on the political party, gender, and age. When you access the official website , participants are divided into 'people who voted for Joe Biden' and 'people who voted for Donald Trump' in the 2020 US presidential election, from February 24 to March 11, 2021. You can see the difference in the content delivered to your Facebook feed in the two weeks of the day. The content was distributed more to Mr. Biden's supporters when the dial was swinging toward blue, and to Mr. Trump's supporters when it was swinging to red.

Looking at the differences in the news sources displayed, Biden's supporters

receive NPR , New York Times , NBC News , The Washington Post, etc., while Trump's supporters receive The Daily Wire , FOX. News , News Max , CNSNews.Com you can see that is widely distributed. In particular, it seems that the frequency with which liberal media such as NPR and the New York Times are displayed is quite biased.

Individual news shows that Biden's supporters tend to be more related to the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) and vaccines, while Trump's supporters are the

Conservative Political Activities Council. The news that Mr. Trump gave a speech was displayed at (CPAC).

Also, the difference between hashtags is like this. The Biden's supporters '#internationalwomensday (

International Women's Day ),' '# womenshistorymonth ( Women's History Month )' '# iwd2021 (International Women's Day 2021),' '# goldenglobes ( Golden Globe Award the hash tag)', playing cards Hashtags such as '#best_family_gifts' were displayed to his supporters.

Looking at the differences between the groups that are recommended, in Biden's supporters 'Star Trek Memes ( Star Trek , such as community about the meme)', 'The New York Times Cooking Community (New York Times cooking community)', Mr. Trump supporters in the of 'truck driver USA! (community of the United States of truck drivers gather)', 'Corrie Ten Boom-christian literature (the second world War of Christians committed to protecting Jews during the writer, Corey Ten 'Community of boom )' was displayed.

On Split Screen, you can see not only the differences in the content delivered by Facebook feeds between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump's supporters, but also the differences by gender and age. Try selecting 'Women vs. Men'.

News sources to be delivered ...

You can check how the content is different.

Age 'Millennials (1981 ~ 1996 years was born

millennials )' and 'Boomers (1946 ~ 1964 years was born Boomer generation has been divided in)'.

You can also change the length of the survey period from the 'Timescale' at the bottom of the screen, and change the end time of the survey from the calendar.

Please note that the Split Screen sample does not accurately reflect the entire American population, nor is it an exact reverse engineer of Facebook's recommended algorithms. It's true that the content delivered to a particular group is biased, but this isn't necessarily due to political thought, gender, or age, but to connected friends and past behavior. The Markup notes that it may be.