Facebook justified its decision to ban academics from creating personal accounts on its platform for researching ad transparency or misinformation this week by stating that it was following Federal Trade Commission rules. The Washington Post reports that the FTC claims this is incorrect and that it does not require such an action.Facebook claims that it has banned these accounts in order to stop unauthorized scraping. It also says that Facebook must get affirmative consent from users before sharing their data (known as the consent decree), and maintain a comprehensive privacy policy.Although Facebook's language regarding which section of the FTC order required its actions was unclear, the agency was not happy with its claims. Samuel Levine, the FTC's acting director for Consumer Protection, wrote a complaint to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, in a letter obtained from The Washington Post.The FTC does not want to be held responsible for Facebook's actionsWe would have contacted you in advance if you had honored your promise to contact us. The consent decree doesn't bar Facebook from making exceptions for good-faith, public interest research, wrote Levine. Although I'm pleased that Facebook has corrected the matter, I was disappointed with how your company handled this issue.In an interview with Wired, Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson, said that it wasn't the FTCs consent decree which forced Facebook to act, but the requirement that Facebook have a comprehensive privacy program. This was something that the company claims the researchers broke. This makes the ban Facebook's decision and not the FTCs. Facebook could allow such research if it wanted.Ad Observer is a Firefox plug-in that allows users to track which political ads are being shown to them and why. Researchers pool this information and use it to learn more about political advertising. This information is used to track who funds political campaigns. It also helps to track misinformation on Facebook as many political ads are not fact-checked. Although the Ad Observer plug in is still available and functional, Facebook has banned pages that advertise the project on its social network. It also banned personal accounts of those involved in the research.Facebook claims it also banned the plug-in due to its violation of users privacy, which collected information from users who did not install it. However, an independent Mozilla audit found that this claim is false. Mozilla's Marshall Erwin stated in a blog post that Ad Observer was recommended to us because of our reviews. We believe it protects users privacy and promotes transparency. It stores targeting parameters, metadata and ads. It doesn't collect any personal information or information about friends. It does not create a user profile.We reached out to Facebook to comment. If we receive back, we will update this story.
