Facebook Demands Shutdown of NYU Research on Political Ads Targeting
The NYU Ad Observer plugin enlisted more than 15,000 users to examine the political ads they were shown on Facebook.
Facebook is pressing NYU researchers to stop collecting data on political ad targeting amid the presidential election, setting up a precedent to discourage independent investigations on Facebook without the company’s approval.
The controversy arose over Ad Observer, a web plugin that copies the political ads that users see on Facebook and puts them in the Ad Observatory public database with the aim of increasing transparency on ad targeting.
“We understand the intent behind your tool. However, the browser plugin scrapes information in violation of our terms, which are designed to protect people’s privacy,” reads an email from Facebook sent to lead researcher and P.h.D candidate Laura Edelson, who shared the email with NYU Local.
In the Oct. 16 email, Facebook’s Head of Data Policy Management Allison Hendrix requested Edelson and her research partner, Associate Professor Damon McCoy, to deactivate Ad Observer and delete the data already obtained via the browser plugin by Nov. 30 or they “may be subject to additional enforcement action.”
Although the social media giant claims that the plugin is violating users’ privacy, Edelson thinks this claim is ungrounded. “We work very hard to make sure we don’t invade a user’s privacy,” Edelson said in an email to Local. “We never collect anything that could be private or personally identifiable.” She also mentioned that the plugin’s code is public and available on Github for anyone to corroborate this.
After the Wall Street Journal made public Facebook’s action against the NYU Ad Observatory on Oct. 23, plugin users have doubled and already surpassed 15,000.
News organizations such as ProPublica and The Markup have relied on the Ad Observer to get information about Facebook campaign strategies in the 2020 presidential election. The data proved crucial to unveil false “Trumpcare” ads and Facebook’s higher ad prices for former Vice President Joe Biden compared to what President Trump paid.
Many scholars, journalists, and lawyers rallied in support of the NYU researchers. “Preserving a healthy democracy requires that the public, journalists, and policymakers have access to credible, verifiable information and research,” reads an Oct. 28 letter by the Mozilla Foundation, which has the signatures of 51 journalism and research organizations and 29 individuals. “Facebook and all other platforms should stop interfering with researchers and journalists who are studying the platform in the public interest.”
The research team said they won’t cease operations and is now being represented by The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University against Facebook. “If Facebook were truly committed to research into its platform, it would create a safe harbor within its terms of service for research that is manifestly in the public interest and that protects user privacy,” the institute’s litigation director Alexander Abdo tweeted about the case.
This isn’t the first time that Facebook has tried to hinder independent research on its platform. Back in 2019, the social media platform made changes on the site to block browser extensions collecting data on political ad targeting such as the one developed by ProPublica. Facebook developed its own ad archive to store similar information to what these plugins were registering, but omitted information on how the ads are targeted.
“If [Facebook] succeed[s] I expect it would have a chilling effect on other researchers,” Edelson said. “That’s why we simply can’t comply with this cease and desist request.”
If you want to contribute to this research effort and increase ad targeting transparency, download the Ad Observer plugin here.
