Meta just closed a vital online research tool. It’s bad news for the fight against misinformation

By Amelia Johns, Associate Professor, Digital and Social Media, School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney
Francesco Bailo, Lecturer in Data Analytics in the Social Sciences, University of Sydney
Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, Associate Professor in Behavioral Data Science, University of Technology Sydney

For more than a decade, researchers and journalists have relied on a digital tool called CrowdTangle to track and fight the spread of viral falsehoods online.

But earlier this week, the owner of CrowdTangle, Meta, shut the tool down. The tech giant has replaced it with its new Content Library, which it says will serve the same purpose and be “more user friendly”.

As long-time…

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