  News feeds in virtually all social media platforms include engagement
metrics, such as the number of times each post is liked and shared. We find
that exposure to these social engagement signals increases the vulnerability of
users to misinformation. This finding has important implications for the design
of social media interactions in the misinformation age. To reduce the spread of
misinformation, we call for technology platforms to rethink the display of
social engagement metrics. Further research is needed to investigate whether
and how engagement metrics can be presented without amplifying the spread of
low-credibility information.
