A privacy paradigm that requires explicit user consent for social media
research will prevent scholars from answering some of the most important
questions surrounding social media’s impact on democracy. The most basic
questions, such as how much disinformation the average user sees in a newsfeed
or which categories of users see questionable or polarized sources, will not be
answerable from data available only from a statistically biased set of users
willing to provide it. For example, as recounted earlier in this volume,
researchers have begun to ﬁnd evidence that consumption and forwarding of
disinformation, at least in the United States, is concentrated among older
people. To be conﬁdent in this conclusion, though, researchers must be able
to analyze – in the aggregate – exposure to different media sources conditional
on the age of the user. However, many people do not publicly reveal their age on
Facebook or other platforms. Although preventing researchers
from
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