Researchers have used a tool that meta owns called crowdtangle to track the spread of viral stories on Facebook. Based on anonymous sources, Facebook has largely removed development support from the tool and is making plans to shut down the tool.

Crowdtangle would pull access that people like Roose have used to surface data showing high engagement with right-wing news sources on Facebook. Ceo Brandon Silverman left the company in October 2021.

Crowdtangle is a public insights tool from Facebook. It helps publishers, journalists, researchers, fact-checkers and more follow, analyze, and report on what’s happening across social media.

The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:1. The top-performing links by U.S. pages are from:1.

Facebook’s John Hegeman argues that Roose’s daily top 10 lists show accurate engagement data but’do n’t represent what most people see on FB’.

Facebook bought crowdtangle in 2016, it said the tool could help publishers’surface stories that matter, measure their social performance and identify influencers’. It tracks the performance of stories across other networks, including Instagram and Twitter.