Democratic Reps. Trahan and Castor introduce the Social Media DATA Act, which would force large platforms to share ad targeting data with researchers and FTC
Facebook's ad library allows researchers to see the content of ads that run on the platform and information on who those ads reach.
Trahan and Castor's move matters because it converts a voluntary research-access regime into an enforcement one: the FTC becomes a recipient of ad targeting data, not just a bystander. The bill also lands amid broader congressional interest in mandatory data disclosure, including proposals requiring data firms like Google to report what they collect and its assessed value quarterly.
First-order effects
Large platforms — Facebook foremost among them — would lose control over who sees ad targeting data, since researchers and the FTC could obtain it directly rather than through curated Ad Library releases or limited CrowdTangle-style access.
Facebook's incremental disclosures on political ad targeting become the baseline Congress is legislating past, raising the cost of the current voluntary approach.
Second-order effects
Meta's planned Ad Library expansions face pressure to go further and faster, because a statutory mandate would set the floor for what all platforms must disclose — competitors get no credit for meeting only the voluntary standard.
Ad-targeting-dependent businesses gain a new audit risk: if the FTC holds platform targeting data, personalized pricing and microtargeting practices become examinable in ways current Ad Library content snapshots do not allow.
Third-order effects
If the pattern of successive bills holds — 2017 political files, this targeting-data mandate, later bipartisan transparency legislation — platform data access shifts from a per-platform courtesy into regulated infrastructure, with the FTC as the standing institutional counterparty.
Researchers' dependence on tools like CrowdTangle, which companies can restrict or retire, gives way to a legal right of access; whoever controls the data pipeline today loses that gatekeeper role.
The trend: Platform transparency is migrating from company-controlled ad libraries toward statutory data-sharing mandates enforced by regulators, with each voluntary concession defining the next legislative floor.
NEW: House Dems are introducing a bill that would force Facebook, Google and others to create ad databases for researchers and the FTC that include, among other things, targeting data on ads, something researchers have been clamoring for w/@BenBrodyDC https://www.protocol.com/...
Good but soooo not good enough. They do not get it. They are making policy while wearing blinkers with zero understanding of how influence operations work, no idea how the different actors and strategies operate. https://twitter.com/...
Platforms have profited off of ads that target high interest credit cards to older women, pill parties to younger users, predatory for-profit colleges to veterans, fraudulent rehab centers to potential patients, conversion therapy to LGBTQ+ youth and more. https://www.upturn.org/…
Good start, but if we want to tackle the problem of influence operations, we need more than ad data - we need to understand how the information environment works as a system, the effects of influence ops, and the impact of countermeasures. Ad data won't answer those questions htt…
really thoughtful, important bill from @RepLoriTrahan & @USRepKCastor to secure more access to ad targeting data for academics & the FTC. it's time to open the black box & examine the disparate impacts of surveillance advertising. https://twitter.com/...
A new piece of legislation would force social media companies to create ad databases for researchers. Not all of the data researchers might like, to be sure, but a powerful first step? @duncanjwatts @zeynep @RebekahKTromble @j_a_tucker @persily @justinhendrix https://twitter.com/…
The Social Media DATA Act will lift the curtain on the ad targeting data that digital platforms don't want us to know about and get it into the hands of researchers who can identify how it's affecting users and our society as a whole. Read more: https://trahan.house.gov/...
A bill from @RepLoriTrahan is aiming to give researchers more insight into ad targeting on Facebook, Google and other sites where ads with civil rights violation or health scams have sometimes run wild. Latest from @issielapowsky and me https://www.protocol.com/...
This is a really important bill. While the ad data is going to grab the headlines, I think that the FTC working group proposed in the bill is even more important. https://twitter.com/...
While online advertising has become the most common method for small and medium sized businesses to reach consumers, it has also emerged as a leading source of disinformation and harmful or defective product promotion that can be targeted to vulnerable populations.
Massive digital platforms like @Google and @Facebook are profiting from targeted ads while bad actors actively exploit their lack of transparency. I just introduced the Social Media DATA Act to shine a light on the wide-ranging effects of ad targeting. https://www.protocol.com/..…
The Social Media DATA Act would mark a significant increase in transparency to help us diagnose and fix problems while holding the platforms accountable. https://decode.org/... https://twitter.com/...