Facebook says it has disabled the accounts, apps, Pages, and access to its APIs for researchers running NYU's Ad Observatory Project, citing TOS violations
whose ads are already public and whose data Facebook stores in a public archive. https://www.protocol.com/... Dell Cameron / @dellcam : NEW: Senate Intel Chair @MarkWarner condemns Facebook's decision, saying the NYU team's work has exposed fraud & predatory schemes on the network. He says he called on FB to work w/ researchers to root out harm & exploitation. “Instead, Facebook has seemingly done the opposite.” https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : 1/ Just want to highlight this once more. Why would this research be so sensitive? Because House Jan 6 Select Committee members including Rep. @BennieGThompson, @RepRaskin and @RepAdamSchiff are considering what to subpoena and who should testify. https://twitter.com/... Ron Wyden / @ronwyden : After years of abusing users' privacy, it's rich for Facebook to use it as an excuse to crack down on researchers exposing its problems. I've asked the FTC to confirm that this excuse is as bogus as it sounds. https://twitter.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Senator Mark Warner statement on Facebook shutting the accounts of researchers who were analyzing political ads on the platform https://twitter.com/... Julia Angwin / @juliaangwin : Facebook's actions are disappointing, but we remain committed to continuing this vital accountability work through our own independent journalism Statement from @nabihasyed & me about Facebook's actions against independent researchers. https://themarkup.org/... David Gilbert / @daithaigilbert : Facebook last night shut down the accounts of researchers at NYU who have been among Facebook's biggest critics. Facebook says it was for privacy reasons. But experts like @jason_kint @FBoversight @snurb_dot_info and @jonathanmayer disagree https://www.vice.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Recall that Cambridge Analytica was in fact a cover-up exposed by reporters. Facebook did not want the world to know about it. https://twitter.com/... Laura Edelson / @lauraedelson2 : 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. 2/4 Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Facebook would clearly prefer any results on this matter come out of its approved research program. https://twitter.com/... Gerrit De Vynck / @gerritd : Scraping policies are bizarre to me. If it's publicly available, why not allow it? If you're worried about user privacy, encourage your users to lock down the public elements of their accounts. But that might hurt engagement... https://twitter.com/... Tim Pool / @timcast : This is interesting Facebook did not ban them for speech violations, the ban was for privacy violations. FB says the group as collecting data on people who did not consent I think FB should still have to prove the violation occurred https://twitter.com/... @cendemtech : 📢📢 Facebook's decision to disable access by researchers at the NYU Ad Observatory is a troubling restraint on independent research about Facebook's political ad targeting. User privacy & independent research are not incompatible. Facebook should restore the researchers' access. https://twitter.com/... Mark Warner / @markwarner : For several years I've called on social platforms like Facebook to work with independent researchers whose efforts improve the safety of social platforms by exposing harmful activity. It's clear that Congress must now act to bring more clarity to the world of online advertising. https://twitter.com/... Lucas Kunce / @lucaskuncemo : Facebook undermines our democracy, makes people less safe, and silences watchdogs who ask them to do better. Under the status quo, they do so with impunity. We need to repeal Section 230. We need to strengthen the FTC. And we need to break them up. https://www.vice.com/... @demandprogress : Facebook is suspending the accounts of the very activists who seek to hold it accountable. The Big Tech giant will do everything it can to save face. We need to #BreakUpFacebook now.https://www.vice.com/... David Gilbert / @daithaigilbert : Why did FB choose last night as the moment to shut down NYU researchers' accounts? According to one of them, @LauraEdelson2, it happened “hours after we informed Facebook that we were studying the spread of disinformation about Jan. 6.” cc @FBoversight https://www.vice.com/... Donie O'Sullivan / @donie : Should be a good one for Congress to look into.... https://twitter.com/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : NEW: Facebook says it has disabled accounts and severed API access for a group of NYU researchers running the Ad Observatory project. FB sent the same group a cease and desist letter in Oct. The researchers are studying political ad targeting on FB https://www.bloomberg.com/... Alex Abdo / @alexanderabdo : The answer can't be that Facebook gets to unilaterally decide what the public knows about the platform. https://twitter.com/... Paul M. Barrett / @authorpmbarrett : .@Facebook's decision to cut off researcher (and NYU colleague) @LauraEdelson2 and the NYU Ad Observatory is cause for concern. We need to know more about political ads on social media. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ @econliberties : By shutting down a NYU research study into their targeting of political ads, @Facebook is yet again trying to hide what happens on their platform and avoid accountability. https://www.wsj.com/... @colorofchange : .@Facebook continues to interfere with efforts to surface data and privacy harms & election misinformation, we need a federal data disclosure bill to ensure we can fully protect Black people. Elected leaders owe it to us to protect our digital civil rights. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Exactly. Every step of way: -they hired Chancellor 11/15 while Guardian was reporting -buried 12/15 story -threatened press in '16, '17 when close -2/18 false testimony to Parliament -3/18 threatened press ahead of report -3/18 misled public on CNN, Congress -dodged subpoenas https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : woah... this is a new fact that escalates this matter significantly and demands full attention of press, regulators and parliaments. All reports should be updated. https://medium.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : interesting timing on Facebook's move to aggressively shut down a major NYU research program that had been studying its platform https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Facebook gets to define what “privacy” means in the context of punishing the NYU Political Ad Observatory, concentrating corporate power. It signals to other academics that Facebook shamelessly now wears Cambridge Analytica as a fig leaf. Brooke Binkowski / @brooklynmarie : Hahahahahaha. It was going to be this excuse or something else https://twitter.com/... Jonathan Mayer / @jonathanmayer : Outrageous: Facebook is shutting down NYU's independent advertising accountability research, on the pretext that the Federal Trade Commission requires that step. Part of a long-running pattern of obstructing academic research and investigative journalism. https://about.fb.com/... Laura Edelson / @lauraedelson2 : including our work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and many other partners who rely on our data. The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. 4/4 Greg Greene / @ggreeneva : “Facebook says it [shuttered the accounts of watchdogs] for privacy reasons”: yes, FB would prefer to earn profits, while paying no heed to whether its products erode the foundations of liberal society, in private. https://twitter.com/... @fboversight : “Outside analysis of Facebook content from essential organizations like the Ad Observatory are increasingly exposing Facebook as a breeding ground for extremism and right-wing trash” a spokesperson for the Real Facebook Oversight Board said @daithaigilbert https://www.vice.com/... @granick : @EthanZ How do you distinguish the Ad Observatory practice from the user-consent based scraping that Cambridge Analytica did? Does the FTC consent decree make a distinction? Ethan Zuckerman / @ethanz : Moving to prevent access like this raises uncomfortable questions about why FB is so opposed to users donating data from their own browsers. If FB is allowed to maintain this stance, it cuts off valuable research efforts that will help us understand mis/disinfo online. Ethan Zuckerman / @ethanz : This one's not even a close call. FB is preventing people from voluntarily installing a browser plugin and sharing data on ads they see... info that should be publicly available in FB's ad library. This effort allows researchers to audit if FB is accurately releasing ad data. https://twitter.com/... Corin Faife / @corintxt : Thanks to the Citizen Browser project - similar to the now blocked NYU Ad Observatory - our reporting at @themarkup has broken numerous stories about Facebook & led to policy change. None would have been possible with only the data the platform chooses to release. https://twitter.com/... Ben Thompson / @benthompson : I wrote about Facebook and the NYU Ad Observatory last year. Was paywalled, free now: https://t.co/mO6SgYR9b4 Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : @mathewi @nfmelendez Beyond that, there's a quite technical discussion about precisely what data the NYU app actually scrapes, and what private data for other people might be in that - in particular, the targeting information. The NYU explanation is... incomplete https://adobserver.org/ @themarkup : This move is alarming. NYU researchers and the Facebook users who volunteered their data were providing a critical public service. https://twitter.com/... Surya Mattu / @suryamattu : Disappointing but unsurprising move by Facebook. Our work continues: https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Super important statement from Jonathan Mayer in this Vice report on Facebook's outrageous move. For those who don't know Mayer, he's been a fierce and brilliant academic in the field of privacy law. If he's making this point then everyone should be listening. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tony Romm / @tonyromm : Facebook has made a long, well documented habit of trying to stifle oversight particularly in academia, without which many of us on the reporting side could not do our jobs https://twitter.com/... @jakelaperruque : Amazing how Facebook finds a way to block data harvesting for important research like this, but has for years been sitting by and doing nothing as Clearview AI scrapes billions of photos from the site to power face recognition surveillance https://twitter.com/... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : This is classic Facebook: Deny researchers access to the data they need to study your behavior, then shut down their accounts when they try to get it some other way, and hide behind privacy rules that you routinely ignore: https://www.wsj.com/... @ttp_updates : Facebook defended the decision with a blog titled: “Research Cannot Be the Justification for Compromising People's Privacy.” Considering FB's entire business model is to sell as much user info as possible, apparently profit trumps research in its hierarchy of noble causes. https://twitter.com/... Kate Starbird / @katestarbird : At a time when society desperately needs mechanisms for independently auditing what's happening w/in soc med platforms — e.g. to understand misinfo & manipulation — Facebook takes a big step in the wrong direction, suspending folks trying to shed light on exploitation via ads. https://twitter.com/... Meredith Whittaker / @mer__edith : Dreaming of a collective academic boycott of Facebook play-nice-or-else databases-crowdtangle, Social Science One, etc- + a refusal to platform research based on such. The status quo is warping research + our understanding of tech & its harms. https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Using Cambridge Analytica as a fig leaf in a bogus blame-the-regulator con job! Meanwhile ClearviewAI (Thiel's panopticon) and Bridgetree (GOP data broker) enjoy their data scraping privileges. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : “Facebook says it was for privacy reasons” 😂 https://twitter.com/... Jameel Jaffer / @jameeljaffer : The greatest trick Facebook ever pulled was convincing people it cares about user privacy. This is an absolutely crucial point: The “users” whose privacy Facebook is trying to protect here are *advertisers.* https://www.protocol.com/... https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : Not sure if Issie stayed up late or got up early- but a good report on the NYU Ad Observatory. I suppose Facebook adopted the Mitt Romney line? “Corporations are people”... https://twitter.com/... Stephen Maher / @stphnmaher : Disturbing precedent. Facebook can exile critics from its space, with serious implications for professional and personal life. https://twitter.com/... Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : I'm truly surprised that Facebook thinks it's in their interest to promote this as data collection on non-consenting users. That immediately evokes Cambridge Analytica. At least, it did for me when they told me that. This is so not that. You'd think they'd want to make it clear. Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : Facebook tried to use the same argument with me when I wrote this deep dive on the NYU standoff, saying vaguely the NYU team was collecting data without people's consent. When I got to the bottom of it, I found out those people were actually advertisers. https://www.protocol.com/... See also Mediagazer
This evening, Facebook suspended my Facebook account and the accounts of several people associated with Cybersecurity for Democracy, our team at NYU. This has the effect of cutting off our access to Facebook's Ad Library data, as well as Crowdtangle. 1/4
By suspending our accounts, Facebook has effectively ended all this work. Facebook has also effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project, 3/4
NEW: Facebook is accusing NYU researchers of collecting data on users who never consented, which sounds bad, but leaves out a huge detail. The users here are advertisers — whose ads are already public and whose data Facebook stores in a public archive. https://www.protocol.com/..…
NEW: Senate Intel Chair @MarkWarner condemns Facebook's decision, saying the NYU team's work has exposed fraud & predatory schemes on the network. He says he called on FB to work w/ researchers to root out harm & exploitation. “Instead, Facebook has seemingly done the opposite.” …
After years of abusing users' privacy, it's rich for Facebook to use it as an excuse to crack down on researchers exposing its problems. I've asked the FTC to confirm that this excuse is as bogus as it sounds. https://twitter.com/...
Senator Mark Warner statement on Facebook shutting the accounts of researchers who were analyzing political ads on the platform https://twitter.com/...
Facebook's actions are disappointing, but we remain committed to continuing this vital accountability work through our own independent journalism Statement from @nabihasyed & me about Facebook's actions against independent researchers. https://themarkup.org/...
Facebook last night shut down the accounts of researchers at NYU who have been among Facebook's biggest critics. Facebook says it was for privacy reasons. But experts like @jason_kint @FBoversight @snurb_dot_info and @jonathanmayer disagree https://www.vice.com/...
1/ Just want to highlight this once more. Why would this research be so sensitive? Because House Jan 6 Select Committee members including Rep. @BennieGThompson, @RepRaskin and @RepAdamSchiff are considering what to subpoena and who should testify. https://twitter.com/...
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. 2/4
NEW: Facebook says it has disabled accounts and severed API access for a group of NYU researchers running the Ad Observatory project. FB sent the same group a cease and desist letter in Oct. The researchers are studying political ad targeting on FB https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Facebook is suspending the accounts of the very activists who seek to hold it accountable. The Big Tech giant will do everything it can to save face. We need to #BreakUpFacebook now.https://www.vice.com/...
Why did FB choose last night as the moment to shut down NYU researchers' accounts? According to one of them, @LauraEdelson2, it happened “hours after we informed Facebook that we were studying the spread of disinformation about Jan. 6.” cc @FBoversight https://www.vice.com/...
Scraping policies are bizarre to me. If it's publicly available, why not allow it? If you're worried about user privacy, encourage your users to lock down the public elements of their accounts. But that might hurt engagement... https://twitter.com/...
This is interesting Facebook did not ban them for speech violations, the ban was for privacy violations. FB says the group as collecting data on people who did not consent I think FB should still have to prove the violation occurred https://twitter.com/...
📢📢 Facebook's decision to disable access by researchers at the NYU Ad Observatory is a troubling restraint on independent research about Facebook's political ad targeting. User privacy & independent research are not incompatible. Facebook should restore the researchers' access. h…
Facebook undermines our democracy, makes people less safe, and silences watchdogs who ask them to do better. Under the status quo, they do so with impunity. We need to repeal Section 230. We need to strengthen the FTC. And we need to break them up. https://www.vice.com/...
For several years I've called on social platforms like Facebook to work with independent researchers whose efforts improve the safety of social platforms by exposing harmful activity. It's clear that Congress must now act to bring more clarity to the world of online advertising. …
.@Facebook's decision to cut off researcher (and NYU colleague) @LauraEdelson2 and the NYU Ad Observatory is cause for concern. We need to know more about political ads on social media. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
By shutting down a NYU research study into their targeting of political ads, @Facebook is yet again trying to hide what happens on their platform and avoid accountability. https://www.wsj.com/...
.@Facebook continues to interfere with efforts to surface data and privacy harms & election misinformation, we need a federal data disclosure bill to ensure we can fully protect Black people. Elected leaders owe it to us to protect our digital civil rights. https://twitter.com/..…
Exactly. Every step of way: -they hired Chancellor 11/15 while Guardian was reporting -buried 12/15 story -threatened press in '16, '17 when close -2/18 false testimony to Parliament -3/18 threatened press ahead of report -3/18 misled public on CNN, Congress -dodged subpoenas htt…
woah... this is a new fact that escalates this matter significantly and demands full attention of press, regulators and parliaments. All reports should be updated. https://medium.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Outrageous: Facebook is shutting down NYU's independent advertising accountability research, on the pretext that the Federal Trade Commission requires that step. Part of a long-running pattern of obstructing academic research and investigative journalism. https://about.fb.com/...
interesting timing on Facebook's move to aggressively shut down a major NYU research program that had been studying its platform https://twitter.com/...
Facebook gets to define what “privacy” means in the context of punishing the NYU Political Ad Observatory, concentrating corporate power. It signals to other academics that Facebook shamelessly now wears Cambridge Analytica as a fig leaf.
including our work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and many other partners who rely on our data. The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. 4/4
“Facebook says it [shuttered the accounts of watchdogs] for privacy reasons”: yes, FB would prefer to earn profits, while paying no heed to whether its products erode the foundations of liberal society, in private. https://twitter.com/...
“Outside analysis of Facebook content from essential organizations like the Ad Observatory are increasingly exposing Facebook as a breeding ground for extremism and right-wing trash” a spokesperson for the Real Facebook Oversight Board said @daithaigilbert https://www.vice.com/..…
@EthanZ How do you distinguish the Ad Observatory practice from the user-consent based scraping that Cambridge Analytica did? Does the FTC consent decree make a distinction?
Moving to prevent access like this raises uncomfortable questions about why FB is so opposed to users donating data from their own browsers. If FB is allowed to maintain this stance, it cuts off valuable research efforts that will help us understand mis/disinfo online.
This one's not even a close call. FB is preventing people from voluntarily installing a browser plugin and sharing data on ads they see... info that should be publicly available in FB's ad library. This effort allows researchers to audit if FB is accurately releasing ad data. htt…
Thanks to the Citizen Browser project - similar to the now blocked NYU Ad Observatory - our reporting at @themarkup has broken numerous stories about Facebook & led to policy change. None would have been possible with only the data the platform chooses to release. https://twitter…
@mathewi @nfmelendez Beyond that, there's a quite technical discussion about precisely what data the NYU app actually scrapes, and what private data for other people might be in that - in particular, the targeting information. The NYU explanation is... incomplete https://adobserv…
This move is alarming. NYU researchers and the Facebook users who volunteered their data were providing a critical public service. https://twitter.com/...
Super important statement from Jonathan Mayer in this Vice report on Facebook's outrageous move. For those who don't know Mayer, he's been a fierce and brilliant academic in the field of privacy law. If he's making this point then everyone should be listening. https://twitter.com…
Facebook has made a long, well documented habit of trying to stifle oversight particularly in academia, without which many of us on the reporting side could not do our jobs https://twitter.com/...
Amazing how Facebook finds a way to block data harvesting for important research like this, but has for years been sitting by and doing nothing as Clearview AI scrapes billions of photos from the site to power face recognition surveillance https://twitter.com/...
This is classic Facebook: Deny researchers access to the data they need to study your behavior, then shut down their accounts when they try to get it some other way, and hide behind privacy rules that you routinely ignore: https://www.wsj.com/...
Facebook defended the decision with a blog titled: “Research Cannot Be the Justification for Compromising People's Privacy.” Considering FB's entire business model is to sell as much user info as possible, apparently profit trumps research in its hierarchy of noble causes. https:…
At a time when society desperately needs mechanisms for independently auditing what's happening w/in soc med platforms — e.g. to understand misinfo & manipulation — Facebook takes a big step in the wrong direction, suspending folks trying to shed light on exploitation via ads. ht…
Dreaming of a collective academic boycott of Facebook play-nice-or-else databases-crowdtangle, Social Science One, etc- + a refusal to platform research based on such. The status quo is warping research + our understanding of tech & its harms. https://twitter.com/...
Using Cambridge Analytica as a fig leaf in a bogus blame-the-regulator con job! Meanwhile ClearviewAI (Thiel's panopticon) and Bridgetree (GOP data broker) enjoy their data scraping privileges. https://twitter.com/...
The greatest trick Facebook ever pulled was convincing people it cares about user privacy. This is an absolutely crucial point: The “users” whose privacy Facebook is trying to protect here are *advertisers.* https://www.protocol.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Not sure if Issie stayed up late or got up early- but a good report on the NYU Ad Observatory. I suppose Facebook adopted the Mitt Romney line? “Corporations are people”... https://twitter.com/...
I'm truly surprised that Facebook thinks it's in their interest to promote this as data collection on non-consenting users. That immediately evokes Cambridge Analytica. At least, it did for me when they told me that. This is so not that. You'd think they'd want to make it clear.
Facebook tried to use the same argument with me when I wrote this deep dive on the NYU standoff, saying vaguely the NYU team was collecting data without people's consent. When I got to the bottom of it, I found out those people were actually advertisers. https://www.protocol.com/…
This is incredibly rich coming from the company that published a paper in 2016 absolving themselves of any ethical wrongdoing for their unregulated psychological research. https://twitter.com/...