NYU Researchers Were Studying Disinformation On Facebook. The Company Cut Them Off
Facebook cut off access to NYU researchers studying political ads and COVID-19 misinformation, saying their work violated its terms of service. Jenny Kane/AP hide caption
Facebook cut off access to NYU researchers studying political ads and COVID-19 misinformation, saying their work violated its terms of service.
Facebook has blocked a team of New York University researchers studying political ads and COVID-19 misinformation from accessing its site, a move that critics say is meant to silence research that makes the company look bad.
The researchers at the NYU Ad Observatory launched a tool last year to collect data about the political ads people see on Facebook. Around 16,000 people have installed the browser extension. It enables them to share data with the researchers about which ads the users are shown and why those ads were targeted at them.
"NYU's Ad Observatory project studied political ads using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook, in violation of our terms of service," Mike Clark, Facebook's product management director, wrote in a blog post.
