Monitoring misinformation related interventions by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: methods and illustration

There is growing pressure for mainstream platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, to fight misinformation by moderating the content that spreads on their site. We investigated the interventions of the platforms by collecting social media data via APIs and scraping. These interventions can be classified into three broad categories: (i) temporary or permanent suspension of users, (ii) displaying flags and information panels, and (iii) reducing the visibility of some content. We provide examples illustrating how researchers can monitor the interventions within each of the three categories for each platform. Finally, we discuss the restrictions to access data and the lack of transparency regarding misinformation related interventions, and how to help the academic community, NGOs and data journalists to successfully study online misinformation.