Thread by @markscott82

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)

https://twitter.com/FBPoliticalAds/status/1319593584144809984

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.