Facebook blocks NYU disinformation researchers over 'unauthorised means', faces backlash

Social media giant Facebook has blocked a team of New York University researchers studying political advertisements and COVID-19 misinformation from accessing the platform. According to critics of the Mark Zuckerberg-developed site, the blocking of NYU Ad Observatory is meant to silence the research that portrays Facebook in a bad light especially when the scrutiny of tech giants have surged in the recent months amid the pandemic. The researchers at the NYU AD Observatory had launched a took in 2020 to collect data from the platform about the political ads that its users see on Facebook.

As per reports, the browser extension tool has been added by approximately 16,000 people as it enables them to share data on which ads they’re shown and why those ads were targeted at them with the researchers. Facebook said on Tuesday that it had disabled the researchers’ personal accounts, pages, apps and access to its platforms citing “unauthorised means.”

Facebook on blocking NYU Ad Observatory

Mike Clark, Facebook’s product management director, wrote in a blog post on August 3, “Today, we disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU’s Ad Observatory Project and its operators after our repeated attempts to bring their research into compliance with our Terms. 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. We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people’s privacy in line with our privacy program under the FTC Order.”

“We made it clear in a series of posts earlier this year that we take unauthorized data scraping seriously, and when we find instances of scraping we investigate and take action to protect our platform. While the Ad Observatory project may be well-intentioned, the ongoing and continued violations of protections against scraping cannot be ignored and should be remediated,” it added. However, on August 4, the researchers disputed Facebook’s claim and said that they are not gathering any private information and said that they are “pretty careful.”

"We really don't collect anything that isn't an ad, that isn't public, and we're pretty careful about how we do it," said Laura Edelson, a doctoral candidate at NYU who helps lead the research project and whose account Facebook disabled, as per NPR report.

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