Just to cherry-pick from your reply here, if $2M is the biggest ticket item you have to show for independent research on this topic - then you're woefully short given Facebook's revenues and size.
10 short years ago, nobody could have imagined that huge swathes of the population could have been swayed to accept non-scientific statements as fact because of social media. Now we're struggling to deal with existential threats like climate change because a lot of people get their worldview from Facebook. Algorithms have decided that they fall on one side of the polarization divide and should receive a powerful dose of fake science and denialism ... all because clicks and engagement.
10 short years ago, nobody could have imagined that huge swathes of the population could have been swayed to accept non-scientific statements as fact because of social media. Now we're struggling to deal with existential threats like climate change because a lot of people get their worldview from Facebook. Algorithms have decided that they fall on one side of the polarization divide and should receive a powerful dose of fake science and denialism ... all because clicks and engagement.