With just over a week before US election, @facebook is pushing to stop a digital tool that promotes transparency around online political ads politico.com/news/2020/10/2…
It’s not the first time the company has tried to block these browser plug-ins that allow people to share which political ads are served up to them. @propublica’s own efforts ran into trouble with FB last year over same issue
FB says these tools break its policies, mostly on privacy grounds. But there’s a big Cambridge Analytica shadow over all of this —
Third-party services that access FB users’ data isn’t exactly kosher with FB, amirite?
But, to be clear, this NYU service has been useful in tracking political ads that get through FB’s net. I wrote about them earlier today (weird)
There are legit questions over privacy, data access & which third-party services can access FB data. But I do question FB’s move here — transparency, after all, is what they have been about ahead of 2020 election
Before I get an email from FB. Yes, I know there’s an argument that these plug-ins technically break your terms of service. I guess my question is: they only exist because there’s not enough granularity in the current ad transparency tools to know what’s really going on
In short: both FB and third-party researchers want greater transparency over how ppl are targeted on the network. It’s just that, with days left before Nov 3, we are still having the same argument as I made <<checks notes>> more than 2 years ago politico.eu/article/fake-n…
Rant over. Thoughts appreciated.

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More from @markscott82

22 Oct
Yellow Jacket protestors in France. Anti-vax campaigners in Italy. Brexit supporters in UK.

Despite their differences, they have one thing in common: a growing use of #QAnon language & ideas — particularly against anti-lockdown #COVID19 measures politi.co/2Hv08H5
I spent weeks tracking QAnon’s development over Europe, across multiple platforms & 6 languages, to see what’s going on.

First: this is not just a far-right thing. People are on the left have similarly embraced QAnon’s ideas of anti-govt/anti-elite.
Second: While QAnon, itself, is still on the fringe of the fringe, its ideas & languages are quickly being blended w/ well-entrenched domestic groups across UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, & the Netherlands.

That’s particularly true in anti-lockdown movement across EU.
Read 6 tweets
16 Oct
A Spanish-language @Facebook page, Alerta Politica, attacked Trump. Another, Politica Veraz, went after Biden. Both had bigger footprints on FB than @BostonGlobe. But behind the partisan news, both pages were run by the same individual politico.com/news/2020/10/1…
Not exactly the type of story that I thought I would be doing ahead of November's election. But since the summer, I had noticed these Spanish-language FB pages were getting massive engagement on FB. I started to dig around.
Couple of things first stood out. The FB pages kinda looked the same in style. They mirrored each other in content, too. Just one was pro-Biden, the other was pro-Trump. Neither page provided much transparency about who was running them.
Read 14 tweets
28 Aug
So I’ve been away for a while, but finally got my head around major decision from Europe’s top court last month involving @Facebook, @maxschrems & $$ billions in data sent from EU to US.

Stay with me here, this gets weird, real quick.

<<cue thread>>
So the basics: Schrems complained to Ireland’s #privacy watchdog that FB wasn’t protecting his data when it was transferred to US. Why? Because @Snowden revelations showed US govt was tracking FB data (w/o telling anyone).

Naughty, naughty
FB balked, so did the Irish. It all got sent to court, eventually landing w/ EU's highest judges.

Questions in play: 1) Should Irish regulator stop FB from transferring data to US? 2) Does US sufficiently protecting EU citizens’ data? 3) How should data be moved outside of EU?
Read 29 tweets
10 Jun
ICYMI -- This announcement is coming today at noon, Brussels time. But you don't have to wait that long -- we already reported everything that's coming HT: @laurenscerulus @LauKaya 👇
FWIW -- this is the EU trying to get ahead of #misinformation as part of wider push to overhaul online content rules -- a package a proposals that will be outlined by end of year.
Expect lots of chat today about the need to boost resources for official disinformation teams within the EU (ironic b/c those teams have struggled to get funding for their work for year. Me from 2017 nytimes.com/2017/02/20/wor…)
Read 7 tweets
1 Jun
So in last few days, both Russia & China have been flooding the US w/ digital propaganda, looking to hijack the nationwide protests/violence for their own agenda.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Giddy up.

<<cue thread>>
Let’s start off w/ the basics. Since May 30, #GeorgeFloyd #BlackLivesMatter & other US-related hashtags have become a mainstay of official Russian/Chinese @Twitter activity. Here’s the top 10 most-used hashtags. See a trend? Image
@Twitter And it should go without saying that the US has now surpassed China in the country getting the most mentions, collectively, from Chinese/Russian official Twitter users. Image
Read 18 tweets
18 Feb
Right, so @EU_Commission will unveil a bunch of digital proposals in the morning w/ the goal of putting 27-country bloc in competition with US and China on everything from data to artificial intellegience. It’s all a little confusing, here’s what you need to know.
<<cue thread>>
So this is all about power. The new Commission wants to push aggressively into digital, making (the. correct) reasoning that whoever controls the online world will control much of the decade
We can argue if Europe can do that. But the key term is “technological sovereignty,” or the idea of decoupling from foreign (read: US and, increasingly, Chinese firms) and to promote “European champions.” More here: politico.eu/article/europe…
Read 20 tweets

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