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. 2023 Nov 3;9(44):eadg6799.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6799. Epub 2023 Nov 3.

Partisan conflict over content moderation is more than disagreement about facts

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Partisan conflict over content moderation is more than disagreement about facts

Ruth E Appel et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Social media companies have come under increasing pressure to remove misinformation from their platforms, but partisan disagreements over what should be removed have stymied efforts to deal with misinformation in the United States. Current explanations for these disagreements center on the "fact gap"-differences in perceptions about what is misinformation. We argue that partisan differences could also be due to "party promotion"-a desire to leave misinformation online that promotes one's own party-or a "preference gap"-differences in internalized preferences about whether misinformation should be removed. Through an experiment where respondents are shown false headlines aligned with their own or the opposing party, we find some evidence of party promotion among Democrats and strong evidence of a preference gap between Democrats and Republicans. Even when Republicans agree that content is false, they are half as likely as Democrats to say that the content should be removed and more than twice as likely to consider removal as censorship.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Partisanship and preferences for content moderation for all respondents.
No control variables; 95% confidence intervals are shown. The left panels show the coefficient estimates and confidence intervals from Eq. 1 for all respondents and the removal (A), harm (C), and censorship (E) outcome. The right panels show the same estimates for all respondents along with the overall gap between partisans for the removal (B), harm (D), and censorship (F) outcome (see section S1.3.1 for details).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Respondents’ assessment of headline accuracy.
No control variables.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. Partisanship and preferences for content moderation for respondents who agree headlines are inaccurate.
No control variables; 95% confidence intervals are shown. The left panels show the coefficient estimates and confidence intervals from Eq. 1 for respondents who agree headlines are inaccurate and the removal (A), harm (C), and censorship (E) outcome. The right panels show the same estimates for respondents who agree headlines are inaccurate along with the overall gap between partisans for the removal (B), harm (D), and censorship (F) outcome (see section S1.3.1 for details).

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