What our second measurement says about misinformation on major platforms in Europe

Summary

This brief reports the second wave of a repeated measurement study tracking the prevalence of mis- and disinformation across major online platforms operating in Europe. Using exposure-weighted analysis of posts, the authors find that TikTok again leads in mis/disinformation prevalence, with its share rising from roughly 20% in the first round to about 25% in the second. Across most platforms, low-credibility accounts continue to outperform high-credibility ones in user engagement — a gap that has persisted or widened. The work is positioned as empirical input to platform accountability under European regulatory frameworks such as the Digital Services Act and the Code of Practice on Disinformation.

Key Contributions

• Longitudinal, comparable evidence on how mis/disinformation prevalence evolves across major platforms in Europe.
• Platform-level benchmarking that identifies TikTok as the worst performer on exposure-weighted prevalence.
• Quantification of a persistent engagement advantage for low-credibility sources, directly relevant to DSA-era regulatory oversight.

Methods

• Second-round repeat measurement study mirroring the methodology of an earlier baseline.
• Exposure-weighted aggregation of posts to estimate prevalence (rather than raw post counts).
• Cross-platform comparison of interactions received by accounts coded as low- vs. high-credibility.

Findings

• TikTok has the highest mis/disinformation prevalence among the platforms measured, at ~25% of exposure-weighted posts.
• TikTok’s prevalence rose by ~5 percentage points between the first and second measurement rounds.
• On most platforms, low-credibility accounts attract more engagement than high-credibility ones.
• The credibility-engagement gap has not narrowed and in several cases has widened.

Connections

This brief sits within an emerging measurement literature documenting platform-level information integrity in the DSA era, complementing US-focused prevalence work like Allen2025-ot and Gonzalez-Bailon2024-rq, as well as cross-platform misinformation audits such as DeVerna2025-dl and Pierri2025-hm. It speaks directly to debates on platform accountability and data access infrastructures explored in Rieder2026-pp, Rieder2025-ju, and Votta2025-xz, and its focus on TikTok connects to platform-specific investigations like Bouchaud2026-lr. The persistent engagement advantage for low-credibility sources echoes broader normative discussions of misinformation salience challenged in Budak2024-ef and Bak-Coleman2025-pm.