Facebook to allow researchers first glimpse into its data

Facebook has given more than 60 researchers from around the world permission to study its data and the effect it can have on elections, but only going as far back as 2017.

The data will reveal to academics which websites were linked to by Facebook users from January 2017 to February 2019. They will also be able to look into the system that advertisers and marketers use to plug into Facebook’s data.

Facebook is seeking to fend off criticism that it needs to be more transparent about how it shares information about its users, as well as its efforts to take down fake news and regulate content.

All of those issues cropped-up amid in the recent allegations that information which Facebook shared with third parties was used to influence the 2016 US general election. The social media giant was also heavily criticised for allegedly allowing Russian meddlers to post fake news aimed at voters on its platform.

On Monday, Facebook said it planned to apply so-called “differential privacy” to the way in which researchers could query its links data, by introducing “noise” to the information that prevents them from being able to personally identify individuals, reported the Financial Times.

The researchers, chosen by Social Science One and SSRC (in addition to Social Science One commission members), will be able to use CrowTangle’s API to track the popularity of news items and other public posts across Facebook and Instagram data.

They’ll also gain access to Facebook’s Ad Library API, which provides information about ads related to politics or issues in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, India, Ukraine, Israel, and the European Union.

“We hope this initiative will deepen public understanding of the role social media has on elections and democracy and help Facebook and other companies improve their products and practices,” wrote vice president for special projects Elliot Schrage and strategic initiatives manager Chaya Nayak in a blog post.

“This initiative will deepen our work with universities around the world as we continue to improve our ability to address current threats and anticipate new ones [...] Over the coming months, we will continue to explore ways to expand the scope of the data we make available to researchers in line with our commitment to privacy."