Instead, platforms are hoarding the data to avoid scrutiny over how their algorithms work. Driving the news: Two weeks ago, Meta officially shut down CrowdTangle - a platform it acquired in 2016 that allowed users to measure the engagement of posts and accounts across social media. Originally celebrated as a breakthrough in transparency, CrowdTangle became a liability for Meta when journalists and researchers used it to suggest Facebook's algorithms favored hyper-political content.
TikTok used to display audience data next to certain hashtags in its videos. But it pulled down that feature after the beginning of the Hamas-Israel war when it argued journalists were misinterpreting the data. More news engagement has moved to private groups and encrypted chats that are difficult for third parties to measure amid privacy concerns.
Metrics cobbled together from third-party vendors and trending hashtags collectively show a more limited picture of consumer behavior on social today compared to the CrowdTangle era. But search data via Google Trends remains consistent and reliable. There's hope that generative artificial intelligence can help news companies analyze large data sets more easily in the absence of links.
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