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Comment by gabea | Hacker News Reader

It’s important to point out that Facebook has an Ads library that allows you to research currently running ads for a given Facebook page and for politics, social issue, or election ads there is an API.

While these capabilities do not map 1:1 to how this plugin works it seems like a bit of a middle ground for the researchers to be able to research ads without risking privacy of people or violating terms of service.

(Disclaimer - I work at FB)

See:

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api/?source=archive-lan...

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> Facebook has an Ads library that allows you to research currently running ads for a given Facebook page and for politics

The library omits targeting information. The specific subject of this research. Also, Facebook has a culture and history of lying. There is public interest in auditing its disclosures.

Moreover there's value in seeing how that targeting applies to real people in practice.

It's great to be able to see what ads campaigns are running, but if you're a real user, who's feed is full of ads from overtly partisan news sites, clothing companies selling aggressive political gear, AND all the campaigns and SuperPACs, what does your experience look like as a whole?

Our information environment is festering. I can't speak to any given study or technique, but we need to understand this stuff.

> research ads without risking privacy of people

...so you go along in the doublespeak. Please elaborate, because the article says it's without merit and also rather rich coming from Facebook.

> violating terms of service

prohibiting independent research to find if what they promise is actually true, after they have been proven untrustworthy many times?

So you don't want independent researcher to verify if you are targeting ads when you have proved from time to time Facebook is not trustworthy with our data?

And the link you shared doesn't have any information how ads are targeted. Stop using Privacy as a PR stunt. I trust those researcher with my data than facebook.

I mean the last time this happened it was Cambridge Analytica, so maybe you shouldnt trust either?

Maybe, but I guess the key question is whether facebook has standing and a duty to make that decision on behalf of their users' privacy, or if it should be left up to the user. Whether or not we trust facebook is relevant to that argument. If we don't buy that this is necessary for facebook to intervene and defend user privacy, the only conclusion I can come with is that they are making this decision because of a threat to their business. And I can't see much of a difference between "we should let the users share their information with Facebook for a better experience on the platform" with "we should let users share their information with NYU to power publically available research in ad targeting"

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