vote,” while others, also randomly selected, saw a slightly more social version of the encouragement: small thumbnail pictures of a few of their friends who reported having voted were shown within the “go vote” pop-up.35 The researchers measured that this slight tweak—completely within Facebook’s control and conducted without the consent or notification of any of the millions of Facebook users—caused about 340,000 additional people to turn out to vote in the 2010 U.S. congressional elections. (The true number may even be higher since the method of matching voter files to Facebook names only
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