Users Polarization on Facebook and Youtube

TL;DR

This study compares content consumption on Facebook and YouTube, revealing that echo chambers form regardless of platform and that early commenting patterns can predict their development.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of user polarization across two major social media platforms and identifies early commenting behavior as a predictor of echo chamber formation.

Findings

Echo chambers form on both Facebook and YouTube.

User commenting patterns can predict echo chamber development.

Content consumption patterns are similar across platforms.

Abstract

On social media algorithms for content promotion, accounting for users preferences, might limit the exposure to unsolicited contents. In this work, we study how the same contents (videos) are consumed on different platforms -- i.e. Facebook and YouTube -- over a sample of $12M$ of users. Our findings show that the same content lead to the formation of echo chambers, irrespective of the online social network and thus of the algorithm for content promotion. Finally, we show that the users' commenting patterns are accurate early predictors for the formation of echo-chambers.