Claiming violations of its terms of service, Facebook has banned the personal accounts of academics who research ad transparency and the dissemination of misinformation on the platform. According to the social network, the group collected user data without permission, but academics say they are being silenced.
The researchers banned by Facebook are part of the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched by the New York University School of Engineering in 2020 and aimed at gathering and analyzing data on political ads. The work involves understanding how these ads are targeted on the social network and who pays for them. The results of the research end up revealing important information, helping in analyses of the spread of misinformation on Facebook.
Researchers say they only exposed the problems
A browser plugin called Ad Observer was created by researchers to automatically collect data indicating which political ads are being shown to users and why those ads are being targeted to them. The collected data is then made publicly available to other researchers and journalists, who use the information to reveal trends and issues on the social network. For example, Facebook's failure to disclose who pays for some of its political ads and how far-right misinformation has more engagement on the platform, such as we saw here.
The group claims the tool does not collect any personally identifiable information, such as a user's name, Facebook ID number or friend list. Facebook says it banned the researchers because they violated the social network's terms of service and that the Ad Observer plugin "collected data about Facebook users who did not install or consent to the collection."
The social network says it is acting in accordance with FTC (Federal Trade Commission) guidelines. independent US agency (responsible for protecting consumer rights). Facebook also claims to have offered to work with the researchers, directly providing them with the data they needed. In addition, the platform allegedly first warned that the group could be banned from the site last year.
including our work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and many other partners who rely on our data.
The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. 4/4
— Laura Edelson (@LauraEdelson2) August 4, 2021
Experts disagree with Facebook
Privacy experts disagree Facebook's position, including in relation to what the company says about the FTC guidelines, condemning what they understand to be efforts by the platform to silence independent research about misinformation. Laura Edelson, lead researcher behind the NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy, which operates the Ad Observatory, said that by suspending the accounts, Facebook had canceled all of the team’s work. In addition, the social network also cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists’ access to Facebook data through the project, including work measuring misinformation about vaccines.
“The work our team does to make Facebook’s misinformation data transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. The Facebook “Facebook is silencing us because our work often draws attention to issues on its platform. Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief we have always put first in our work, as a pretext to do this. If this episode demonstrates anything, it is that Facebook should not have veto power over who can study them,” Edelson said.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. The Verge e Engadget
Image: Primakov/Shutterstock