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When Facebook said As he was suspending the accounts of a team of NYU investigators on Tuesday, it appeared that the company’s hands were tied. The group was collecting data on the direction of political ads through a browser extension, something Facebook he repeatedly warned them that it was not allowed.
“We’ve been trying for months to work with New York University to provide the exact access that three researchers have requested as privacy protections,” wrote Mike Clark, Facebook’s director of product management. in a blog post. “We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and to protect people’s privacy under our privacy program [Federal Trade Commission] Order “.
Clark mentioned it permit decree imposed according to FTC In 2019, along with a $ 5 billion fine for privacy violations. You can understand the state of the company. If researchers want one thing, but a strong federal regulator demands something else, the regulator will win.
Except for the dire state of Facebook, the decree of permission does not prohibit what investigators do. Perhaps the company acted not to continue in the good graces of the government, but because it does not want to learn one of the secrets that the public cares about: who is shown what ads and why.
The FTC sanction arose Cambridge Analytica scandal. In this case, the appointed academic researchers obtained data from Facebook users and data about their friends directly from Facebook. These data were badly held at the hands of Cambridge Analytica, which used micro-failure in the name of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
NYU Project, Ad Observer, works very differently. It does not have direct access to Facebook data. On the contrary, it is an extension of the browser. When a user downloads the extension, they agree to post the ads they see, “Why do I see this ad?” Including section information. widget, to researchers. Researchers have concluded that political advertisements are being targeted at user groups – Facebook does not disclose the data.
Does this arrangement violate the permit decree? Two sections of the order could be applied. In Section 2, Facebook requires a user’s permission before sharing their data with someone else. Since the ad observer agrees to share data with users, not Facebook itself, that doesn’t matter.
When Facebook shares data with outsiders, “it has some obligations to share that data with the police,” says Jonathan Mayer, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton. “But there’s nothing that a user wants to tell a third party about what they’ve seen on Facebook.”
Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne acknowledged that the permit decree did not force Facebook investigators to suspend their accounts. According to him, in section 7 of the decree, Facebook calls for the implementation of a “comprehensive privacy program” that protects the “privacy, confidentiality and integrity of user data.” in fact, Osborne says the investigators repeatedly violated a section of Facebook terms of service This provides: “You may not enter or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior consent).” It refers to dragging 10 blog posts announcing account bans.
Laura Edelson, a doctoral student at NYU and founder of Ad Observer, has dismissed the suggestion that the tool is automatic. scrape not at all.
“When I write a summary program I automatically scroll through a website and the computer controls how the browser works and what is downloaded,” he says. “That’s not how our extensions work. The extension works with the user and we only collect ad data that is shown to the user.”
Bennett Cyphers, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees. “There’s no good and consistent definition of scraping,” he says, but the term is weird when users choose to document and share personal experiences on a platform. control. Use the notices of the user’s relationship with Facebook in any way unless they say it is against the terms of service. “
After all, whether the extension is truly “automated” is irrelevant, because Facebook can always change its policy or, depending on the existing policy, allow researchers to do so. So the most important question is whether the ad observer violates anyone’s privacy. A Facebook spokesperson for Osborne says that when the extension goes to an ad, it may reveal information about other users who do not support sharing their data. If I have the extension installed, for example, it might be to share the identity of my friends who liked or commented on an ad.
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