NEW: Facebook’s attempt to shutter research at NYU on political ads is just the most extreme example of the increasingly fraught relationship between platforms and academics.

My #longreads on how tech giants both court and crush the people who study them protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
I talked to @LauraEdelson2 of NYU about her legal issues with Facebook, @mark_ledwich about how the NYU case has put a chill on funding into YouTube transparency projects, @gchaslot about scraping YouTube data and @j_a_tucker about collaborating w/Facebook protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
While reporting, Facebook told me Ad Observer violates their terms by scraping/publishing users' data who didn't consent.

That claim shocked me until I realized: the users Facebook was talking about were advertisers whose ads and Pages are already public protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
I want to stress that none of this is easy for the platforms who *have* gotten in so much trouble over protecting user data. See: Cambridge Analytica. But that had to do with exposure of private users' data, not ads Facebook is paid to make public. protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
And a bit of news: Not only has Ad Observer not shut down (negotiations w/Facebook are ongoing), it's expanding. In the last month, the team began using the browser extension to collect data from YouTube as well. See permissions screen capped a month apart protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with issie lapowsky

issie lapowsky Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @issielapowsky

19 Mar
I'm creating a new thread to talk about this issue, because I think it's an important one.

Facebook told me multiple times that Ad Observer collects and publishes data on users who hadn't consented.

It was such a damning allegation, I wanted to know whose data they meant. 1/x
I pushed until they confirmed they were talking about advertisers' public Pages, not private users' accounts.

Had I published their statement outright, it would have been misleading or at least incomplete and damaging to the NYU researchers. protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
It reminded me of how much tech cos control the narrative around researchers intent.

The most glaring example of this was the vilification of the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which I covered for WIRED here: wired.com/story/the-man-…
Read 4 tweets
17 Nov 20
If Senators actually do their jobs during this hearing, we could get answers to critical questions about the efficacy of Facebook and Twitters' election defenses.

But I don't have high hopes. protocol.com/post-election-…
And we're off. In opening remarks, Graham asks: "If you're not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post?"

Note: Not republishing something from the NY Post is not the same as having editorial control over the NY Post.
Some rational thinking from Graham: "I don't want the government to take over the job of telling America what tweets are legitimate and what are not."
Read 39 tweets
27 Nov 18
Lawmakers from 9 countries are questioning Facebook's Richard Allan right now in London. First up is Canada's Charlie Angus, who's going in on the fact that Zuckerberg didn't show up like they wanted him to. He condemns the "frat boy billionaires" in CA upending global democracy.
"You have lost the trust of the international community to self-police." - Angus of Canada
Background: This should be an interesting day. Last week, the British MPs seized a cache of internal FB documents that are part of a legal case in CA and were ordered sealed. The docs allegedly back up accusations of Facebook exploiting user data and anticompetitive practices.
Read 19 tweets
12 May 18
NEW: The House Democrats' trove of Russia-linked Facebook ads contained ads targeting suspicious Chrome extensions at teenage girls. The extensions gained wide access to users' browsing behavior and Facebook accounts. h/t @d1gi for spotting wired.com/story/russia-f…
The landing page for the ads where users could install the extension was registered in April 2016 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The ads went live in May. By June, people were already complaining about how the extension had spammed all their Facebook friends wired.com/story/russia-f…
Google confirmed it had removed the extension from the Chrome store and from users' devices. Unclear how many people downloaded the extension from the Facebook ads. The ads only got a little over 80 clicks. wired.com/story/russia-f…
Read 4 tweets
16 Apr 18
A researcher with lots of foresight scraped 5 million political ads on Facebook during 6 weeks before the 2016 election. She found that half of the advertisers had absolutely no federal records or online footprint. Of that half, 1 in 6 were Russian trolls. wired.com/story/russian-…
These "suspicious" advertisers predominantly targeted voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She also found that white voters received 87 percent of all immigration ads. wired.com/story/russian-…
She found that the advertisers that were not required to file any disclaimers or disclosures with the FEC ran 4 times as many of these divisive ads as advertisers that did have to file with the FEC: wired.com/story/russian-…
Read 5 tweets
4 Apr 18
Facebook call with Mark Zuckerberg is starting now. They say it'll be 45 minutes (!).
“We're an idealistic and optimistic company and for the first decade we really focused on all the good connecting people brings” - Zuck

But in the past, "We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is...It was my mistake."
"Yesterday we took a big action by taking down Russian IRA pages targeting their home country." - Zuck
Read 16 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!