David Lazer

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” said David Lazer, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied disinformation. “Wherever there’s a loophole in enforcement, it’s going to be a place that activity will go.”

While suspending Trump may have reduced misinformation by itself, the study’s findings hold up even if you remove his account from the equation, said co-author David Lazer, professor of political science and computer and information science at Northeastern University.

Together, the findings suggest that Facebook users seek out content that aligns with their views and that the algorithms help by “making it easier for people to do what they’re inclined to do,” according to David Lazer, a Northeastern University professor who worked on all four papers.

“It’s not a grand scientific observation,” said David Lazar of Northeastern University, a co-author of the study. “We’d need more data to see and we’d need more crises.”

Together, the findings suggest that Facebook users seek out content that aligns with their views and that the algorithms help by “making it easier for people to do what they’re inclined to do,” according to David Lazer, a Northeastern University professor who worked on all four papers.

David Lazer, a political scientist at Northeastern University, calculated that before vaccines were available, U.S. states without mask mandates had 30 percent higher Covid death rates than those with mandates.