3 ms·
(I don't use the product. Or maybe I should say, I'm not a Facebook product) >Facebook moved to penalize the researchers in part to remain in compliance with a
by N00bN00b 5y ago
(I don't use the product. Or maybe I should say, I'm not a Facebook product)
>Facebook moved to penalize the researchers in part to remain in compliance with a 2019 data privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, in which the company was punished for failing to police how data was collected by outside developers, Clark said. Facebook was fined a record $5 billion as part of a settlement with regulators.
That's a reasonable explanation for their action, right? Even if it's not 100% true, if you're a manager at Facebook, and the situation isn't 100% clear cut, you're still going to act, so you can show it as an example the next time the FTC tries to fine them.
And they did offer an alternative:
>Clark said Facebook offers targeting data sets for political ads, and has suggested the NYU group use that information.
- daxuak 5y agoI'm not familiar with this research field but I would be concerned about what's the price tag came with that offer, and whether accepting that dataset is indeed in align with the research purpose, e.g. does it contain the relevant info, is it comprehensive, how could researchers prove that it's not manipulated / is the model used in production / is not biased towards FB's interest. I believe it is reasonable for FB to react to scraping under the current circumstances. But it seems equally reasonable for the researchers to go with the data collection approach they chose.
- whymauri 5y agoThe FB dataset drops an unmeasured/unreported number of ads that the researchers believe could be significant. It also lacks any demographic information, which is part of the study (participants consent via a browser extension).
- emodendroket 5y agoSeems like regardless of what course of action you take someone could write an unfavorable article about it.