8/7/21 Facebook Shuts Down NYU Researchers and Blames the FTC

Of all the companies that affect our lives, Facebook is probably the one we trust the least. But Facebook is now trying to say "believe us!" after closing the accounts of New York University researchers investigating the spread of political misinformation on social media. It was part of a project to “uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, to identify misinformation in political ads, including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook’s apparent amplification of partisan misinformation,” the lead researcher, Laura Edelson, said.

The researchers were using their own browser plug-in, called Ad Observer, which allows Facebook users to opt in to sharing data about the political ads shown by the platform. The Ad Observatory Project had been researching the Facebook Ad Library, where you can search on advertisements run on the social media platform.

Facebook says the researchers "violated its terms of service" and did "unauthorized data collection." Ad Observer, the company said, "was programmed to evade our detection syst4ems and scrape data....some of which is not publicly viewable on Facebook." It also "collected data about Facebook users who did not install it or consent to the collection."

Edelman responded that "We really don't collect anything that isn't an ad, that isn't public, and we're pretty careful about how we do it."

Facebook also blamed the Federal Trade Commission, saying the FTC was the one that directed them to use the privacy practices that the company cited for shutting down the researchers' work. But, um, Nope, the FTC informed Facebook in a letter on Thursday, which is quoted in one of the articles cited below.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said she was troubled by Facebook cutting off researcher access to political advertising data, “which has shown that the company continues to sell millions of dollars’ worth of political ads without proper disclosures.”

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Does Facebook in general have the credibility to make users believe its statements about the researchers?

Do you think that Facebook shut down the researchers' work in good faith?

Do you have any thoughts about how legislation could better ensure that the practices of social media are conducted transparently?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/facebook-shuts-nyu-investigation-into-political-ads_n_610bd3e1e4b041dfbaa62db6