“cases where backfire effects were found tended to be particularly contentious topics, or where the factual claim being asked about was ambiguous.” ... Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, did research in 2017 showing how Instagram was a major source of Russian propaganda. But he told Lorenz “he would be unable to carry out similar research today due to the [Instagram’s 2018] API restrictions. ‘The ability for me to do a network analysis or look at how accounts are connected has basically gone away,’ he says.”