Center for Effective Global Action

This randomized experiment on a social media platform in Pakistan measures the impact of two treatments that use ex-ante moderation to control misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic compared to standard ex-post moderation. One treatment never posts misinformation, while the other rebuts it. We also disseminate official information about the pandemic on the platform. The treatments reduce daily users by 19%. This reduces exposure to official information by 29% more than exposure to misinformation. A conceptual framework posits that this can be explained by the fact that, in this setting, official information is more trusted and disseminated than misinformation.