Meta to give researchers more information on political ad targeting.

Meta said that it would give more detailed information on how political ads are targeted across its platform to give insight into the ways that politicians, campaign operatives and political strategists buy and use ads ahead of the elections.

Academics and researchers who are registered with the Facebook Open Research and transparency project will be able to see how political and social ads are used to target people. People who like dogs or people who enjoy the outdoors are included in the information.

Meta said it would include summaries of targeting information for some of its ads in its publicly viewable Ad Library starting in July. The Ad Library was created by the company to help journalists, academics and others find information about the misuse of digital advertising.

The amount of information that can be seen has been restricted due to privacy reasons. Critics have claimed that the company's system has been flawed and buggy, and have asked for more data.

Conflicts have been caused by that. Meta clashed with a group of New York University academics who wanted to learn more about the platform. The company cut off access to the group due to violations.

The Ad Library is a way to share information on political ad targeting while trying to keep data on its users private, the company said.

The company said in a statement that it hopes to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies.

With the new data, researchers can see that over the course of a month, a Facebook page ran 2,000 political ads and that 40 percent of the ad budget was targeted to people who live in Pennsylvania.

Meta said it had to follow privacy rules and regulations on what types of data it could give outsiders. In an interview, Jeff King, a vice president in Meta's business integrity unit, said the company had hired thousands of workers over the past few years to review privacy issues.

He said that every single thing they release goes through a privacy review.

Three months before the last U.S. presidential election, new data on political ads will be released.