Study: despite News Feed changes, “junk news” from known sources of disinformation in EU get 1.2x-4x the engagement of professional news sources on Facebook
A study carried out by academics at Oxford University to investigate how junk news is being shared on social media …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Oxford study lands mid-arc in the fake-news-on-Facebook debate. A year earlier, research showed engagement for sites identified as publishing fake news had fallen by more than half between the 2016 election and July 2018 — evidence the News Feed changes were working. Oxford's EU data complicates that picture: even after those changes, known disinformation sources still earn 1.2x to 4x the engagement of professional news.
The finding proved durable rather than transitional. Subsequent measurements kept confirming the asymmetry — including an [[a:970304|NYU study finding misinfo publishers drew six times the engagement of trusted sources like the WHO]] — making this one data point in a consistent pattern rather than a snapshot anomaly.
First-order effects
- Professional EU news publishers are competing for News Feed distribution against sources that reliably draw up to four times their engagement, so Facebook's ranking changes shift relative reach without closing the gap.
- Facebook's policy and ranking teams get evidence that the post-2016 engagement decline applied to fringe fake-news sites but not to established disinformation outlets operating in Europe.
Second-order effects
- Because [[a:963769|far-right publishers gain 65% more engagement when they publish false stories while liberal and centrist ones lose engagement for the same behavior]], the incentive runs one way — rewarding partisan outlets that fabricate and punishing those that don't.
- A global survey of journalists separately ranks Facebook as a greater source of COVID-19 disinformation than elected officials, giving newsrooms grounds to treat the platform as a hostile distribution channel rather than a partner.
Third-order effects
- If the engagement gap holds across every measured period — 2019's 1.2x-4x, 2021's 6x — the structural conclusion is that engagement-based ranking itself is the mechanism, handing EU regulators a measurable case for intervention beyond voluntary Feed adjustments.
- Sustained junk-news advantage points toward news organizations diversifying off-platform distribution entirely, eroding the publisher traffic that made Facebook a news intermediary in the first place.
The trend: Across successive platform policy cycles, engagement-ranked feeds keep rewarding disinformation over professional journalism faster than moderation can suppress its sources.