| It's frighteningly easy for misinformation to spread on social media, but one of the biggest platforms often escapes attention. Instagram is massively popular, particularly among young people, and conspiracy theorists are taking advantage of it to spread lies.
It's scary stuff — and scarier still is that Instagram is failing to stop it. We talked to HuffPost's Jesselyn Cook about her recent report on how disinformation can spread on Instagram.
How did you get the idea for this piece?
New York University's Paul Barrett recently published a great report warning that Instagram will be one of the major platforms of choice for purveyors of disinformation in the run-up to next year's presidential election. After reading it, I decided to do some investigating to see firsthand how such content performs on the Facebook-owned, billion-user site. As it turns out, Instagram doesn't just host political fake news, it promotes, protects and profits off it.
You used Instagram to recreate how someone might wind up with a feed full of conspiracy theorists. Can you explain how that works?
Like most all free social media platforms, Instagram commodifies our attention by using an algorithm that's designed to keep us scrolling for as long as possible. To do this, it will track what kind of content we interact with on the app, then serve us up more of the same — even if that means algorithmically distributing demonstrably fake news and sensational clickbait.
When I followed a single hyper-partisan conspiracy theory account, Instagram automatically recommended dozens more just like it. So I followed them, too — as any user in that situation might — and soon enough, my feed was filled with flagrant propaganda and falsehoods. You can imagine how easily Instagram could take someone who's simply curious about a certain conspiracy or fringe movement, and pull them into an echo chamber of political disinformation.
A lot of reporting on social media disinformation has ignored Instagram. Do you have any theories on why?
Good question! Facebook and Twitter have taken the brunt of the blame for housing Russian disinformation campaigns ahead of the 2016 election, but it was Instagram that was "perhaps the most effective platform" Russia's Kremlin-linked troll farm used to target voters at that time, according to a report commissioned by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Part of Instagram's ability to largely avoid scrutiny ahead of 2020 likely has to do with the fact that it abruptly shut down its public API (Application Programming Interface) last year amid the fallout of its parent company's data privacy scandal. This has made it near-impossible for researchers to gather meaningful data about the spread of fake news and extremist content on the platform, giving journalists less to write about, and leaving the public less informed.
What should people do to avoid disinformation on Instagram?
Be vigilant and do your due diligence — especially when it comes to political news on the platform. Photos (and even videos!) can be doctored to bend reality and manipulate unwitting viewers. If you see a claim that seems dubious, such as the ones presented in these phony, Instagram-promoted memes, look for the source of the information so you can evaluate it. (Read some tips for that here.) If the source isn't listed, that's a good reason to be skeptical. And just because an account has lots of followers — or is recommended to you by Instagram — that doesn't mean it's trustworthy.
As Paul Barrett, the disinformation researcher from NYU, put it: "It's really important for people to know what's happening so that they're skeptical of what they see on Instagram in the same way that they're gradually starting to question some of what they see on Facebook."
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