By Emma Nitzsche
Facebook is facing backlash from researchers and lawmakers after blocking academic research on political ads. The social media platform cut off academic researchers for “scraping” data from the platform, leading to controversy about Facebook’s transparency claims.
Facebook cited privacy concerns when it blocked the New York University’s Ad Observatory Project from utilizing the platform. NYU researchers created a browser extension called Ad Observer that scrapes data from Facebook without being detected by its security systems. The Project has been in dispute with Facebook for months after the program collected data on ads spreading political hoaxes, violence, and COVID-19 disinformation.
“Over the last several years, we’ve used this access 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,” said Laura Edelson, the NYU researcher heading the Project.
Once discovered, Facebook blocked the Project’s accounts, pages, and platform access.
Mike Clark, a product management director at Facebook, released a blog post claiming Facebook was forced to block the researchers to comply with the terms of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) order. In 2019, the social media company reached a settlement with the FTC to resolve privacy complaints. Following the terms of the settlement, Facebook paid the FTC $5 billion over data privacy violations. Clark noted that Facebook told researchers their tool would violate the social network’s terms before launching a year ago.
“NYU’s Ad Observatory project studied political ads using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook, in violation of our Terms of Service,” said Clark.
The FTC responded to Facebook’s statement in a phone interview with The Register. Ashkan Soltani, a privacy researcher and former Federal Trade Commission technologist, dismissed Facebook’s justification and said the action was “selective enforcement.”
Despite Facebook’s reasoning, the move prompted heated responses from researchers and politicians who argued that it blocked independent access to its internal tools.
Laura Edelson, a doctoral candidate at NYU, tweeted her concerns with the ban.
“Over the last several years, we’ve used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, identify misinformation in political ads including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook’s apparent amplification of partisan misinformation,” wrote Edelson.
Damon McCoy, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, released a statement claiming that “it is disgraceful that Facebook is attempting to squash legitimate research that is informing the public about disinformation on their platform.”
