One of the articles referenced in this paper looks pretty interesting: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1637447 https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/1369118x.201

One of the articles referenced in this paper looks pretty interesting: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1637447 https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1637447 > Bruns, A. (2019). "After the “APIcalypse”: social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research." Here's a sample: > "In early 2019, Facebook also took explicit steps to disable the functionality of a browser plugin promoted by the investigative journalism initiative ProPublica that would capture the Facebook ads encountered by plugin users, as well as a number of similar other tools. Using direct Web scraping methods that did not rely on API access, the plugin sought to generate independent, publicly accessible observational data especially on political advertising practices in the United States and elsewhere; citing a need ‘to keep people’s information safe’, Facebook responded by deliberately obfuscating the HTML code served by its Website in such a way that ads could no longer be immediately recognised as distinct elements of a Facebook page (Merrill & Tobin, 2019)." The social media business model is still based on selling people's information to third parties, but they don't want independent scrutiny of their propaganda practices (aka content curation, labeling and promotion of 'trusted sources', etc.)