Social Media Manipulation 2022/2023: Assessing the Ability of Social Media Companies to Combat Platform Manipulation
Social Media Manipulation 2022/2023: Assessing the Ability of Social Media Companies to Combat Platform Manipulation

Author(s): Rolf Fredheim, Sebastian Bay, Tetiana Haiduchyk, Anton Dek, Martha Stolze
Subject(s): Media studies, Social Informatics, ICT Information and Communications Technologies
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Social media manipulation; fake accounts; removing inauthentic accounts; responsiveness;
Summary/Abstract: In this report—the fourth version of our social media manipulation experiment—we show that social media companies remain unable to prevent commercial manipulators from under-mining platform integrity. Overall, no platform has improved compared to 2021 and, taken together, their ability to prevent manipulation has decreased. Buying manipulation remains cheap. The percentage of accounts identified and removed by the platforms dropped. We demonstrate that the manipulation providers have circumvented sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It remains easy to pay for manipulation services with both Visa and Apple Pay. The platforms’ ability to combat manipulation by slowing the speed of delivery has declined. Today, 89 percent of purchased inauthentic behaviour is delivered within one day. The vast majority of the inauthentic engagement remained active across all social media platforms four weeks after purchasing. Thus, the platforms’ moderation decisions appear to be only minimally responsive to user notifications.

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