ABSTRACT
Social-media platforms are subject to the policies of their owners and government regulators. The ability of a few companies or even individuals to control how people engage with each other raises questions of unaccountable power. This also relates to companies’ ability to learn about their users’ lives and to exploit this information for targeted advertising, or to sell it to organisers of political campaigns. While Twitter remains the social-media platform most used for political statements and for individuals to access news, it is not necessarily more significant than print and broadcast media in the formation of national narratives. Facebook introduced fact-checking policies with the goal of ensuring that shared material was correct and accurate and did not mislead other users. Twitter moved in 2020 to remove fake accounts and bots and to prevent inflammatory tweets, especially those that might damage public health by spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic.
