"Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after AlgorithmWatch, too. "
What can be done to stop Facebook closing down these research projects?
The guy providing the data in the CA scandal was a credible scientist at the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge. His social media data collection back then was considered part of his legitimate research activities. It was funded by research grants, and nobody had a problem with that. That is, until some of the data he collected was potentially used for political microtargeting.
The thing is, Facebook and the other social media companies have never had any real interest to support research projects that collect and analyze their data. Why should they?
However, since the public outrage over the CA event they basically have carte blanche to deny all these requests - even from seemingly credible scientists - and just say: "Hey, we just want to prevent another CA."
Something you could consider is signing their open letter, they need 1000 supporters and have a bit more than 1 month remaining. That could bring this under the attention of the European Lawmakers. You can find it here:
> What can be done to stop Facebook closing down these research
projects?
Maybe I'm being naive, but what I would do is conduct my research
without having a facebook account myself and without directly
accessing or sending any messages through its servers. That way I
wouldn't be bound by facebook's terms of service (if they're legally
binding at all) and wouldn't incur any legal liability for
unauthorized access to someone else's computer. I hope the researchers
took those precautions, but nothing would surprise me.
"Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after AlgorithmWatch, too. "
What can be done to stop Facebook closing down these research projects?