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Social media companies change their policies in the wake of bad press

Between 2005 and 2021, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were more likely to make policy changes in the weeks after negative stories in the media

By Chris Stokel-Walker

26 July 2024

Social media companies appear to be sensitive to criticism

Shutterstock/easy camera

Negative news stories about social media platforms appear to be highly effective at pressuring companies into changing their policies.

Christian Katzenbach at the University of Bremen, Germany, and his colleagues analysed policy changes across Facebook, Twitter (now X) and YouTube between 2005 and 2021, and how media coverage from 26 major English-language publications affected their policies. (New Scientist was not among the publications picked by the researchers.)

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Article amended on 26 July 2024

We clarified the kind of news stories the AI model was trained on

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