12 | New Scientist | 19 February 2022
Climate changeJason Arunn Murugesu‘Cold blob’ may be
slowing loss from
Iceland’s glaciers
News
Social media
Chris Stokel-WalkerFacebook anti-vaccine
policy worked briefly
and pages. A further 266,
posts were analysed from groups
and pages that appeared between
November 2020 and August 2021.
After revisiting, the team found
that 13 per cent of pages and 24 per
cent of groups in the original
sample disappeared. A further
5 per cent of groups changed
their privacy setting to private,
preventing further analysis.
In those groups and pages that
remained, the volume of posts and
interactions decreased, indicating
Facebook had some success in
tackling vaccine disinformation.
On anti-vaccine pages and groups,
posts decreased to 29 per cent and
60 per cent of pre-policy levels and
engagements dropped to 23 per
cent and 66 per cent of pre-
intervention levels, respectively.
(arxiv.org/abs/2202.02172).
However, the number of posts and
engagements on pages promoting
vaccines dropped, too, though not
by as much. The team says this
content may have been caught
up in the dragnet.
The effect was short-lived. After
six months, new posts on pages
returned to 82 per cent and
engagements to 80 per cent of
their pre-policy level, while in
groups, posts were 8 per cent
higher than before the policy and
engagements were 312 per cent
higher. While the team is still
analysing why this happened,
Broniatowksi believes that users
making anti-vaccine posts may
simply have found a way around
the policy.
A spokesperson for Meta says:
“There were many other changes
happening during this period
which could have played a role in
these results, which the research
doesn’t take into account.” Meta
says this could include the roll-out
of covid-19 vaccines, and how the
tone of discussions around them
changed over time. ❚POLICIES put in place by Facebook
to tackle covid-19 vaccine
misinformation had a meaningful
impact on the amount of negative
conversation around jabs – but
only temporarily.
David Broniatowski at George
Washington University in
Washington DC and his colleagues
used CrowdTangle, a tool
belonging to Facebook’s owner
Meta, to analyse anti-vaccine
conversations on Facebook before
and after the platform made policy
changes. These were introduced
between November 2020 and
February 2021 and included
removing posts that could lead
to harm, such as false claims
that covid-19 vaccines contain
microchips.
The researchers identified 216
Facebook pages and 99 Facebook
groups conducted in English
where discussions about vaccines
regularly took place. A Facebook
page is often run by an individual
or organisation to predominatelybroadcast to users, while a group
more often hosts discussions
between users. Two-thirds of
the pages and groups the team
identified were opposed to covid-
19 vaccines, based on descriptions
written by moderators.
Every public post made on those
groups and pages in the 12 months
prior to November 2020 was
extracted, along with the levels of
engagement with them. The same
pages and groups were revisited
in August 2021 – after policy
changes – and all public posts
made in the previous six months
were extracted and analysed. In
total, more than 350,000 posts
were gathered from these groups24%
of anti-vaccine groups closed
after Facebook’s policy changesICELAND’S glaciers are melting
more slowly than expected
because they are close to
a “cool blob” of water in
the North Atlantic Ocean.
Brice Noël at Utrecht
University in the Netherlands
and his colleagues devised
a model to reconstruct the
shrinking of Iceland’s glaciers
between 1958 and the present
day. The model was based
on regional data from the
surrounding North Atlantic,
as well as atmospheric data
and information from the
glaciers themselves.
The researchers discovered
that Iceland’s glaciers – which
cover about 10 per cent of the
country – started melting morequickly around 1995. But, in
line with previously published
work, they found that this rate
of loss slowed after 2011.
“We already knew Iceland’s
glaciers were melting slower
from satellites, but with this
model, we could link this to
the development of a cool
blob in the ocean,” says Noël.
This “cool blob” is a spot inthe North Atlantic, just south of
Greenland, which is particularly
cold. “We don’t have conclusive
evidence for what caused this
blob or how big it really is as it’s
always fluctuating,” says Noël.
The researchers estimate
that, before 2011, Iceland was
losing about 11 gigatonnes
of ice a year, whereas after
this date, the losses have been
about half this figure.
The researchers’ model
predicts that the blob will keep
cooling Iceland’s glaciers until
about 2050, when it will
dissipate. At this point, the
glaciers will start melting more
quickly again (Geophysical
Research Letters, doi.org/hgnb).
By 2100, the island’s glaciers
will have lost the same amount
of volume as they would have
done regardless of whether the
cool blob in the North Atlantic
existed or not, according to the
model’s prediction.
Noël says the key to slowing
the rate of ice loss is curbing
climate change. “If we stop
warming so much in the second
half of the century, then we
can conserve these glaciers
for longer,” he says. ❚GUITAR^ PHOTOGRAP
HE
R/SHUTT
ER
ST
OCK“ Iceland was losing
11 gigatonnes of ice
a year, but losses have
halved since 2011”Skaftafellsjökull glacier
in Vatnajökull National
Park, Iceland