Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday shuttered CrowdTangle, a popular social media analysis tool that journalists, civic groups and researchers used to monitor trending posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram in real time.
The timing of the tool’s shutdown, months ahead of a major US presidential election, has drawn concern from groups that relied on CrowdTangle to track the flow of information on social media, including viral falsehoods that have led to real-world harm. Using CrowdTangle, journalists and researchers could show how many users engaged with a piece of content, which groups supercharged the spread of a post and just how often political and medical misinformation went viral on Facebook and Instagram.
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