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

Negative news stories on social media platforms seem to be very effective in pressuring companies to change their policies.

Christian Katzenbach at the University of Bremen in Germany and colleagues analyzed policy changes on Facebook, Twitter (now X) and YouTube between 2005 and 2021, and how the average coverage of 26 major English-language publications has affected his policies. (New Scientist was not among the publications selected by the researchers).

“There are actually significantly more changes in…