#AdObservatory is an NYU project that enlists Facebook users to record the ads they see, building a database of the ads Facebook runs and to check whether Facebook is adhering to its own policies, for example, on labeling and limiting political ads
The project has been extensively used by journalists and transparency activists to hold Facebook to account for failing to live up to its own standards. It relies on a browser plugin that Facebook users choose to install to help with the transparency effort.
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Facebook's dismal track record on advertising, combined with the urgent concerns about disinformation in paid political advertising in the runup to the 2020 election, are cause for alarm.
The company, however, sees it as cause for a legal threat.
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