"Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after AlgorithmWatch, too. "
What can be done to stop Facebook closing down these research projects?
Go back in time and make Cambridge Analytica disappear.
Facebook’s biggest scandal and existential threat came from company siphoning data disguised as a research.
There’s of course a tons of details to it, but it’s totally understandable to me that they’re doing everything to protect against 2nd CA.
No information is collected from users who don't voluntarily enrol into this research study.
This is like a tobacco company putting a terms of service on its packet, saying you may not study or research its harms.
The thing is, Facebook and the other social media companies have never had any real interest to support research projects that collect and analyze their data. Why should they?
However, since the public outrage over the CA event they basically have carte blanche to deny all these requests - even from seemingly credible scientists - and just say: "Hey, we just want to prevent another CA."
https://algorithmwatch.org/en/defend-public-interest-researc...
Maybe I'm being naive, but what I would do is conduct my research without having a facebook account myself and without directly accessing or sending any messages through its servers. That way I wouldn't be bound by facebook's terms of service (if they're legally binding at all) and wouldn't incur any legal liability for unauthorized access to someone else's computer. I hope the researchers took those precautions, but nothing would surprise me.