Brandon Silverman, the founder and CEO of the Facebook-owned analytics tool CrowdTangle, is leaving the company; team members were reassigned several months ago
The reassignment of CrowdTangle's team several months ago, followed now by founder-CEO Brandon Silverman's exit, reads as the endgame of that friction: the platform's most widely used external-facing analytics window is losing both its leadership and its dedicated staff inside Meta.
First-order effects
Newsrooms and researchers who rely on CrowdTangle lose their most visible internal advocate at Facebook just as the tool's team has been dispersed, raising questions about continued investment in publisher-facing features.
Meta absorbs CrowdTangle fully into its own structure with no founder counterweight — the Independence that made the data credible to outside observers ends with Silverman's departure.
Second-order effects
If access or product support erodes, journalists and disinformation researchers are pushed toward workarounds and toward demanding transparency by mandate rather than by platform goodwill.
Rival platforms face pressure to offer comparable research access, turning researcher data access into a competitive and reputational issue rather than a courtesy.
Third-order effects
A pattern of platforms absorbing or constraining independent measurement tools points toward legislated transparency requirements filling the gap that voluntary analytics once covered — a dynamic echoed in Silverman's own post-Meta turn toward crafting a bipartisan social media transparency bill.
The trend: Platform-owned transparency tools are being subordinated to corporate priorities, shifting the burden of independent social media measurement toward regulators and legislation.
Can confirm that CrowdTangle CEO Brandon Silverman is leaving Facebook. He was seen as a pro-transparency voice inside the company, and his departure was widely expected after the CT team was disbanded earlier this year. https://www.theverge.com/...
“I'm not sure what the future holds for CrowdTangle or data transparency here at Facebook, but I'm optimistic,” CrowdTangle's @brandonsilverm wrote in an internal farewell post today. More backstory on CrowdTangle drama here from @kevinroose: https://www.nytimes.com/...
As I reported this summer, Silverman clashed with CMO Alex Schultz and other execs after CrowdTangle's data showed that right-wing figures were getting massive engagement on the platform. https://www.nytimes.com/...
🚨 The founder of CrowdTangle, a tool that Facebook acquired and now points to when it talks about transparency, is leaving Facebook, @alexeheath reports. CrowdTangle has been caught up in an internal transparency battle at Facebook https://www.theverge.com/...
this is really sad. Brandon led the CrowdTangle team and seriously helped a community of disinfo journalists report on Facebook in the past 18 months. end of an era. https://twitter.com/...
Very concerned about the future of CrowdTangle and the team that created it. Another example of Facebook mangling a product it purchased. https://www.theverge.com/...
For years I have used Crowdtangle as the core of the audience and dis- and misinfo work we did as part of our social media production. And for years I've wondered how much longer it would last before it got too uncomfortable and/or eaten up by FB. https://www.theverge.com/...