[dryrun-2026-05-04] Confounding factors—including pre-existing homophily, cable-television exposure, partisan elite polarization, and demogr
[dryrun-2026-05-04] Confounding factors—including pre-existing homophily, cable-television exposure, partisan elite polarization, and demographic sorting—do not fully account for the observed growth in affective polarization, leaving room for algorithmic effects.
Guess et al. (2023) experimentally removed reshared content from Facebook feeds during the 2020 US election, substantially reducing political-news exposure but finding no detectable polarization effect.
Resharing is the feature most associated with viral spread and algorithmic amplification on Facebook.
Argument from Lack of Evidence (Negative Evidence)