About the Authors

Jason J. Jones

jason.j.jones@stonybrook.edu

Affiliations Department of Sociology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America, Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America

Robert M. Bond

Affiliation School of Communication, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Eytan Bakshy

Affiliation Facebook, Menlo Park, California, United States of America

Dean Eckles

Affiliation Facebook, Menlo Park, California, United States of America

James H. Fowler

Affiliations Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dean Eckles was an employee of Facebook, Inc., when the experiment was conducted. Eytan Bakshy was an employee of Facebook, Inc., when the experiment was conducted and continues to be employed at Facebook. The manuscript was reviewed by multiple employees at Facebook, Inc., not involved in the research. No changes were suggested by those reviewers. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Formal analysis: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Investigation: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Methodology: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Software: EB DE. Validation: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Visualization: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Writing – original draft: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF. Writing – review & editing: JJJ RMB EB DE JHF.