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Tag: New York University

  • Facebook Shuts Down Another Group of Researchers

    Facebook Shuts Down Another Group of Researchers

    Facebook has taken action against another group of researchers investigating it, drawing more scrutiny and condemnation.

    Facebook made headlines when it banned researchers from New York University who were studying political ads and misinformation on the platform. The move was blasted by none other than the FTC’s Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection.

    It appears the NYU researchers weren’t the first groups of researchers Facebook took action against. AlgorithmWatch was studying Instagram’s algorithm, to better understand how it prioritized photos and videos. Like the NYU researchers, AlgorithmWatch used a browser plug-in volunteers installed to collect data from their own feeds.

    Evidently, Facebook took issue with the researchers and their work, at first dismissing it as flawed before threatening them. 

    AlgorithmWatch said the move shows Facebook’s real intentions.

    We designed our add-on with great care so that Facebook cannot identify and prosecute our volunteers. However, Facebook’s reaction shows that any organization that attempts to shed light on one of their algorithms is under constant threat of being sued. Given that Facebook’s Terms of Service can be updated at their discretion (with 30 days’ notice), the company could forbid any ongoing analysis that aims at increasing transparency, simply by changing its Terms.

    It’s a safe bet Facebook has only just begun to experience backlash from this latest revelation.

  • FTC Official Blasts Facebook’s Actions Against Researchers

    FTC Official Blasts Facebook’s Actions Against Researchers

    The FTC’s Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine, has written an open letter blasting Facebook’s recent actions.

    Facebook banned researchers from New York University that were studying political ad spending and disinformation on the social media platform. The company used its Terms of Service, which prohibit scraping personal data, to justify its actions. As critics have pointed out, however, the only data NYU researchers were collecting was regarding ads that are, by their very nature, public.

    Director Levine has written an open letter to Facebook criticizing the company’s actions, and making it clear the company’s initial claim of ‘protecting privacy’ doesn’t hold water in these circumstances.

    Below is a copy of his letter:

    Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

    I write concerning Facebook’s recent insinuation that its actions against an academic research project conducted by NYU’s Ad Observatory were required by the company’s consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. As the company has since acknowledged, this is inaccurate. The FTC is committed to protecting the privacy of people, and efforts to shield targeted advertising practices from scrutiny run counter to that mission.

    While I appreciate that Facebook has now corrected the record, I am disappointed by how your company has conducted itself in this matter. Only last week, Facebook’s General Counsel, Jennifer Newstead, committed the company to “timely, transparent communication to BCP staff about significant developments.” Yet the FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.

    Had you honored your commitment to contact us in advance, we would have pointed out that the consent decree does not bar Facebook from creating exceptions for good-faith research in the public interest. Indeed, the FTC supports efforts to shed light on opaque business practices, especially around surveillance-based advertising. While it is not our role to resolve individual disputes between Facebook and third parties, we hope that the company is not invoking privacy – much less the FTC consent order – as a pretext to advance other aims.

    Sincerely,

    /s/ Samuel Levine

    Acting Director

    Bureau of Consumer Protection

  • Facebook Bans Researchers Investigating It

    Facebook Bans Researchers Investigating It

    Facebook is taking action, that appears to be retaliatory, against researchers that are investigating it.

    Researchers from New York University have been investigating how political advertising money is spent on the social media platform and shed a light on disinformation. The researchers created a browser plug-in that allowed users to capture ads they saw and post the data to a public database.

    Facebook has since blocked the researchers, claiming they are breaking the company’s Terms of Service by scraping data, saying so in a blog post:

    Today, we disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU’s Ad Observatory Project and its operators after our repeated attempts to bring their research into compliance with our Terms. 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. We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people’s privacy in line with our privacy program under the FTC Order. 

    There’s only one problem with Facebook’s stance: The data NYU’s browser plug-in captures is not from private individuals, but from ad companies whose ads are already publicly available — they wouldn’t be very effective ads if they weren’t.

    Facebook’s actions are already drawing criticism, with its actions being seen as a poorly veiled attempt to silence its critics. The result has been calls for increased scrutiny, including from no less that Senator Ron Wyden, well-known for his staunch pro-privacy stance.