Facebook has shut down the personal accounts of a pair of New York University researchers and closed an investigation into misinformation spread through political ads on the social network.
Facebook says the researchers violated its terms of service and were involved in unauthorized data collection from its vast network. However, academics say the company is attempting to control research that portrays it negatively.
NYU researchers from the Ad Observatory Project had been looking for years in Facebook’s ad library to search for ads running on Facebook’s products.
Laura Adelson, the lead researcher behind NYU, said, “By uncovering systemic flaws in the Facebook ad library, identifying misinformation in political ads, including many sowing mistrust in our election system, and Facebook’s apparent amplification of partisan misinformation. was used to study it. Cyber Security for Democracy, in a statement.
Adelson said Facebook’s actions against the NYU project also cut off other researchers and journalists who had access to Facebook data through the project.
Researchers offered Facebook users a web browser plug-in tool that lets them volunteer their data to see how the social network targets political ads.
But Facebook said the browser extension was programmed to evade its detection system and clear user data, raising privacy concerns.
In a blog post late Tuesday, Facebook said it takes unauthorized data scraping seriously, and when we find instances of scraping we investigate and take action to protect its platform.
Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to Adelson and another researcher, Damon McCoy, in October, but did not shut down their accounts until Tuesday, when Adelson informed the platform that he and McCoy were studying the spread of disinformation on the platform. . January 6 attack on the US Capitol, researchers said.
Facebook product management director Mike Clark wrote in a blog post that the Menlo Park, Calif., company welcomes research that holds it accountable but does not compromise the platform’s security or users’ privacy.
While the advertising observatory project may be well-intentioned, the ongoing and continuing breach of protection against scraping cannot be ignored and must be remedied,” he wrote.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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