[EL] WSJ: "Facebook Disables Access for NYU Research Into Political-Ad Targeting"

[Hugh L Brady]

"Facebook Inc. disabled a New York University research project’s accounts
and access to the platform, effectively shutting down a study of the
social-media giant’s targeting of political ads. The NYU Ad Observatory,
launched last September by the university’s engineering school, recruited
more than 6,500 volunteers to use a special browser extension to collect
data about the political ads Facebook shows them. Soon after, Facebook,
which hadn’t given permission for the project, demanded the researchers
cease collecting the data. On Tuesday, Facebook disabled the accounts,
apps, Facebook pages and platform access associated with the project and
its operators. . . .Facebook, he said, moved to stop unauthorized scraping
and to comply with an agreement the company entered into with the U.S.
government to address past privacy missteps."

The privacy argument seems somewhat pretextual to me and not in line with
the settlement since the data wasn't being used for profit and there's no
evidence from the story that the data wasn't secure and/or properly
anonymized. I fully confess, tho, that I haven't read the FTC agreement in
detail and was wondering if, indeed, it would bar this type of work.

Full story here
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-cuts-off-access-for-nyu-research-into-political-ad-targeting-11628052204?st=xt9dntqbx44lqsl&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink>
.
-- 
Hugh L. Brady
Senior Lecturer in Law | The University of Texas School of Law
M (512) 289-0535
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