Politicians and researchers are scathing about Facebook's ban on academics who analyze political ads and misinformation.Senator Mark R. Warner (D.VA) stated that the company's actions were deeply troubling, while Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, said she was disturbed by the news. Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, conducted a privacy audit on the academics work to determine if Facebook was correct in banning researchers.These claims are, in our opinion, void.Facebook claims that the accounts were closed due to privacy issues with the Ad Observer. This is according to Marshall Erwin, Mozilla's chief security officer. These claims are simply not true, according to our opinion.Facebook banned academics from working with the NYU Ad Observatory. They created an Ad Observer browser plug-in that Facebook users could download to collect data on which political ads were shown to them and their targeted audiences. The NYU Ad Observatory says Facebook doesn't provide similar information. This is due to the fact that, as researchers have found, it sometimes fails even to label certain political ads.Facebook has claimed that it protects users privacy and has justified its ban on NYU Ad Observatory pages and accounts. This is a reasonable argument considering that Cambridge Analytica was a result of third-party researchers scraping user data from the site. Critics say Facebook is missing the details. Mozilla, having examined the code and consent flow for the Ad Observer plug in, insists that it does not pose a privacy threat.In a blog post, Marshall Erwin of Mozilla wrote (emphasis mine):Ad Observer was recommended by us because of its transparency and user privacy. It tracks ads, targeting parameters, and metadata. It doesn't collect any personal information or information about friends. It does not create a user profile. You can also see the My Archive tab to view all data collected. You can opt in to share additional demographic information to assist research into specific groups being targeted. However, that option is not available by default.According to Casey Newtons Platformer newsletter Facebook may gather information about third parties. One example is that if someone pays to boost a post for a fundraiser their photo and name may end up in the hands of NYU researchers. However, Newton points out: The actual harm to the user in any of these cases would seem very minor, if it can be called a harm.Senator Warner stated that Facebook's actions were the wrong response to concerns about political ad transparency on its platform and misinformation.Warner expressed deep concern at Facebook's latest decision to cut off transparency efforts by an outside group. This has resulted in numerous revelations of ads that violate Facebooks Terms and Conditions, frauds, predatory financial schemes, as well as political ads that were incorrectly removed from Facebook's poor Ad Library. Since many years, I have urged social media platforms such as Facebook to support independent researchers whose efforts are consistent with improving the safety and integrity of social media platforms through exposing exploitative and harmful activity. Facebook seems to have done the opposite.
