(5 Aug 2021) Facebook has cut off some academic researchers for “scraping” data from the platform, sparking a fresh controversy about the leading social network’s transparency to outside experts studying misinformation and abusive content.
The California tech giant acted late Tuesday to block the research from New York University’s Ad Observatory Project, citing privacy concerns.
Facebook product management director Mike Clark said the accounts from the project were disabled “to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people’s privacy in line with our privacy program.”
The NYU project had been at loggerheads for months with Facebook over the program, which used a browser tool to collect data on ads spreading political hoaxes, violence and Covid-19 misinformation.
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