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VOICE ARCHIVE

Rebekah Tromble

@rebekahktromble
24 posts
2023-02-18
Twitter officially qualifies as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) in the EU, meaning it is subject to the most stringent requirements of the Digital Services Act. That includes Article 40 on data access for vetted researchers. https://transparency.twitter.com/ ...
2023-02-18 View on X
Politico

Under the Digital Services Act, online platforms disclose their MAUs in the EU: YouTube has 401M+, Facebook ~255M, Instagram ~250M, TikTok 150M, Twitter 100.9M

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2023-02-11
It's official. Academic researchers have started getting notices that their access to the API will be shut off. 1/ https://twitter.com/...
2023-02-11 View on X
CNN

Some under-resourced academic and civil-society researchers say a Twitter API paywall would jeopardize studies of influence campaigns and platform manipulation

Are you affected? … Tweets: Rebekah Tromble / @rebekahktromble : It's official. Academic researchers have started getting notices that their access to the API will be shut off. 1/ ...

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We're being directed to the Enterprise ($$$$$) option. The only problem? Filling out their form results in an auto-reply directing researchers back to the Academic Research Program. And the contact person listed no longer works at Twitter. 2/
2023-02-11 View on X
CNN

Some under-resourced academic and civil-society researchers say a Twitter API paywall would jeopardize studies of influence campaigns and platform manipulation

Are you affected? … Tweets: Rebekah Tromble / @rebekahktromble : It's official. Academic researchers have started getting notices that their access to the API will be shut off. 1/ ...

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@transparenttech is organizing mutual aid for impacted researchers. Fill out the form here to request or provide support: 3/ https://proxy.link.app/...
2023-02-11 View on X
CNN

Some under-resourced academic and civil-society researchers say a Twitter API paywall would jeopardize studies of influence campaigns and platform manipulation

Are you affected? … Tweets: Rebekah Tromble / @rebekahktromble : It's official. Academic researchers have started getting notices that their access to the API will be shut off. 1/ ...

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2022-06-25
Meta is playing games with us. One minute they're committed to CrowdTangle; the next it's gone. Maybe, sort of, a little bit. This is a way to divide and wear down the community of researchers and journalists who care about holding Meta accountable. Don't fall for it.
2022-06-25 View on X
Bloomberg

Source: in February, Meta started an official internal process to shut down CrowdTangle, but paused the plan as the EU's Digital Services Act gained traction

and fund it for a year or two — to ensure that this vital tool is here for the next series of elections. https://twitter.com/... Davey Alba / @daveyalba : NEW from me: CrowdTangle ...

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2022-01-10
A great profile of @katieharbath by @JeffHorwitz @WSJ. Much respect for Katie and the important work underway at the @Integrity_Inst. https://www.wsj.com/...
2022-01-10 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Ex-Facebook director Katie Harbath says social media will likely incubate future political violence if tech platforms or governments don't urgently intervene

Katie Harbath says she left Facebook disillusioned; now she pushes for more online guardrails  —  Katie Harbath joined Facebook …

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2021-10-01
Facebook employs some the smartest, most talented researchers in the world. Many work there because they want to—and genuinely see ways in which they can—do good. I'm really saddened by how readily the company is throwing these researchers under the bus.
2021-10-01 View on X
Wall Street Journal

WSJ publishes six internal Facebook documents it used for its report about Instagram's negative impact on teen girls, after Facebook published two of the docs

and genuinely see ways in which they can—do good. I'm really saddened by how readily the company is throwing these researchers under the bus. Jeff Horwitz / @jeffhorwitz : So here ...

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Over and over again Facebook comms and leadership have devalued, undermined, and sidelined these researchers' crucial efforts.
2021-10-01 View on X
TechCrunch

Senators grilled Facebook exec Antigone Davis at a hearing about Instagram's impact on teens and were frustrated by her reticence to answer questions directly

Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that the Wall Street Journal published … Source: Senate Commerce Committee .

View original
Facebook employs some the smartest, most talented researchers in the world. Many work there because they want to—and genuinely see ways in which they can—do good. I'm really saddened by how readily the company is throwing these researchers under the bus.
2021-10-01 View on X
TechCrunch

Senators grilled Facebook exec Antigone Davis at a hearing about Instagram's impact on teens and were frustrated by her reticence to answer questions directly

Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that the Wall Street Journal published … Source: Senate Commerce Committee .

View original
2021-09-04
Like a broken record, FB responds that the study looks at engagement, not views/impressions. Leaving every researcher to again exasperatedly point out that FB DOESN'T MAKE IMPRESSIONS DATA AVAILABLE. 2/
2021-09-04 View on X
Washington Post

NYU study: from Aug. 2020 to Jan. 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinfo got six times more engagement on Facebook than trustworthy news sources

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Or better yet, let's see policymakers step in and require transparency and accountability via independent scrutiny. One crucial step in this direction is the Social Media DATA Act introduced by @RepLoriTrahan @USRepKCastor 5/ https://trahan.house.gov/...
2021-09-04 View on X
Washington Post

NYU study: from Aug. 2020 to Jan. 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinfo got six times more engagement on Facebook than trustworthy news sources

View original
And as we just saw, the company's own attempts to share results based on “top views” (ie, those Widely Viewed Content reports) are anything BUT transparent. 3/
2021-09-04 View on X
Washington Post

NYU study: from Aug. 2020 to Jan. 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinfo got six times more engagement on Facebook than trustworthy news sources

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It's time for Facebook to put up or shut up. Make the data available for independent, external scrutiny or give up this tired refrain. 4/
2021-09-04 View on X
Washington Post

NYU study: from Aug. 2020 to Jan. 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinfo got six times more engagement on Facebook than trustworthy news sources

View original
2021-08-19
Note that the report doesn't offer any justifications for the types of content FB included in the analysis, nor why they excluded other types of content. And a LOT was excluded. 2/
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

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First of all, the report only covers public posts. Why? 🤷🏻‍♀ ️ FB tells external researchers that it can't give us private post data because, well, user privacy, FTC consent decree, GDPR, etc, etc. But this was internal analysis. So why not look at everything? 3/
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

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Next, notice that the report only covers public posts viewed via users' News Feeds. It doesn't include ads. Nor promoted posts. Nor posts a user views on a Page. Nor in a Group. Nor in the Groups tab. Nor in the News tab. Nor via notifications. Nor via a friend's timeline. 5/
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

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In other words, this report leaves us w/o any real sense of what it's *actually reporting on*. Despite the title, we know it's not a complete picture of content viewed on FB. But we don't even have the basic descriptive stats needed to assess just *how* (in)complete it is. 7/
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

View original
I also found Facebook's “Widely Viewed Content” report strange. But for slightly different reasons. Setting aside the weird spam in those top 20 lists for a min, I want to talk about *how* FB reached its conclusions—specifically, what they looked at & what they ignored. 🧵 1/ https://twitter.com/...
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

View original
My guess is that including non-public posts (ie, shared with just friends or within a private group) would change some of the conclusions fairly significantly. But that's just my conjecture. Because FB doesn't even indicate how much of the overall content is in fact public. 4/
2021-08-19 View on X
Protocol

Facebook, for the first time, shares a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and Pages on Facebook in the US during Q2

A video of two cats walking, tails intertwined, looking like the best of friends.  A resource site for Green Bay Packers alumni. Source: Facebook Transparency Center .

View original
2021-08-05
Let's boil this down: As things currently stand, Facebook gets to slurp up our data, sell our attention to advertisers on the basis of that data, and then single-handedly decide to shut down independent efforts to examine whether those ads are manipulative or otherwise harmful. https://twitter.com/...
2021-08-05 View on X
Wired

Mozilla's analysis says Facebook's justifications for cutting off access to researchers running NYU's Ad Observatory project “simply do not hold water”

The company says privacy concerns forced it to block access for a team of academics.  Whose privacy, exactly? Source: The Mozilla Blog .

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