Facebook shuts out NYU academics’ research on political ads
>But Facebook said the browser extension was programmed to evade its detection systems and vacuum up user data, creating privacy concerns.<p>The supreme irony of this statement coming from Facebook. That's your business model lol.<p>For context[1], the 'unauthorized data collection' in this case that Facebook claims is happening is the data <i>about the advertisers</i>, not the participants in the study, who actively install an extension that collects information about what political ads are shown to a user, stripped of personally identifying information. This sounds like getting a political campaign ad in the mailbox, reporting that to a local study and then getting terminated by the mail company for violating the campaigns privacy, that's some real bizarro world shit<p>[1]<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609020/facebook-bans-academic-researchers-ad-transparency-misinformation-nyu-ad-observatory-plug-in" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609020/facebook-bans-aca...</a>