Researchers found that Facebook users interacted six times more with misinformation posts on the platform.

A new study reviewed by researchers from the University of New York and the Université Grenoble Alpes, in France, intends to show that misinformation has six times more engagement on Facebook than News real, according to The Washington Post.

Therefore, the study analyzed posts from the Facebook pages of more than 2.500 news editors between August 2020 and January 2021. They found that pages that publish the most inaccurate information receive more likes, shares and comments. 

The increase in engagement was seen across the political spectrum, however, the study also found that “right-wing editors are much more likely to share misleading information than editors in other political categories.”

In addition, researchers will share the study as part of the 2021 Internet Measurement Conference in November.

A Facebook spokesperson pointed out that the study looks only at engagement, not “reach,” which is the term the company uses to describe how many people see content on Facebook, regardless of whether they interact with it.

In fact, Facebook does not provide outreach data to researchers. Instead, they and others who want to understand and quantify the social media platform’s misinformation problem often turn to a tool called CrowdTangle, which is owned by the company.

A platform cut off the research group’s access to that data and said that continuing to give third-party researchers access to the data could violate a deal with the Federal Trade Commission it struck after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In order to repress allegations that misinformation is a problem on Facebook, the company released a “transparency report” in August on the most-viewed posts on the platform during the second quarter of the year, from April to June. 

But The New York Times revealed that the band had cancelled plans to release a first-quarter report because the most-viewed post between January and March was an article linking the coronavirus vaccine to the death of a Florida doctor.