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

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.)

“There are really significantly more changes in…