Facebook closed down two accounts belonging to academic researchers late Tuesday night, preventing them from being able to study misinformation and political ads on the largest social network.The academics were accused by the company of unauthorized scraping and compromising user privacy. These claims are being criticized by many Facebook users as thin pretexts for destroying transparency.The company took legal action against Damon McCoy and Laura Edelson, well-known researchers associated with NYU's Cybersecurity for Democracy Project who have been a longtime adversary of the company. Their access to Facebook's Ad Library, one of the most important transparency efforts by the company to date, and data on the most popular posts from CrowdTangle social media monitoring service CrowdTangle has been halted.Facebook has a long history with McCoy and Edelson. Just weeks before the 2020 election, the company sent cease-and-desist letters to the pair. It asked them to remove Ad Observer from their browsers and publish their findings. Ad Observer, a browser tool that anyone can install, is designed to allow researchers rare access into Facebook's targeting algorithms and reveal how it has become a trillion-dollar company.Edelson stated on Twitter that over the years we have used this access to identify systemic flaws within the Facebook Ad Library, to identify misinformation in political ads, including those sowing distrust and in our election system, as well as to study Facebooks apparent amplification of partisan misinformation.Facebook effectively ended this work by suspending our accounts. Facebook also effectively closed access to over two dozen journalists and researchers who have access to Facebook data via our project. This includes our work measuring vaccine misinformation using the Virality Project, and many other partners that rely on our data.This incident sparked a new round of criticism about the company's preference for transparency over opacity when it comes to the most dangerous behaviors that the platform incubates.Some members of Congress had already noticed Facebook's actions by Wednesday. Senator Ron Wyden (D.OR) criticised Facebook's decision to penalize researchers, claiming that it was protecting users due to the company's history of violating privacy rights. Wyden also called Facebook's bluff about its claim that revoking researcher acces is an attempt to comply with a FTC privacy order that was issued to the company for previous privacy violations.Facebook has been using users' privacy for years and it is now a good excuse to clamp down on researchers who expose its problems. I have asked the FTC for confirmation that this excuse is not as absurd as it sounds. https://t.co/eHuPiVYFe9 Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) August 4, 2021Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), also commented on Facebook's latest controversy. Warner called the decision deeply troubling and praised independent researchers who have consistently [improving] social media platforms integrity and safety by uncovering harmful and exploitative activities.Warner stated that Congress should act now to make online advertising more transparent. This is a significant vector for fraud and other misconduct.Mozilla, a Firefox developer, came forward to defend Ad Observer's position on Wednesday. He noted that Ad Observer had reviewed the extension twice: it did a code review, and then examined the consent flow, before recommending the browser extension through its online storefront. Mozilla's trust head stated in a blog that Facebook's claims are simply not true.Facebook's Wednesday decision was also condemned by a number of misinformation specialists, researchers, and free press organizations. In a joint statement, Nabiha Syed and Julia Angwin from The Markups condemned Facebook's sloppy approach to privacy.However, Facebook now shields user privacy from independent researchers who want to investigate the platform and its influence.
