Facebook Inc isn’t happy as they have threatened action against the University of New York researchers for highlighting Ad data discrepancies and to hold back its research project on the corporate political-ad-targeting practices.
According to the Wall Street Journal, two University of New York researchers who work on the project of over 6000 volunteers to collect information on political advertisements the social media giant publishes have received a cessation-and-defense letter from Facebook. Facebook accused University of New York without the company’s permission of collecting information from its platform and asked them to delete this information.
‘May face action’
According to the report, on 16 October Allison Hendrix, the official of the Privacy Policy of Facebook, wrote a letter to the researchers at the Tandon School of Engineering in NYU saying that their data collection project contravene company terms and conditions because they prohibit the collection of data from their platform. Hendrix warned that the University would face “enforcement action” if the university doesn’t stop collecting data and stop this project.
The Tandon School of Engineering in NYU launched last month a project known as the Ad Observatory which collects data from the Ad Library of Facebook, a voluntary service launched by the company to make advertising budgets by individuals, groups and the audience it is intended to be more transparent. However, Ad Observatory has highlighted major differences in the data provided by Facebook concerning political advertising. The researchers said the California-based technology company routinely failed to supply information on political advertising, such as information on targeting who sees the ads.
“”Our analysis of cyber security shows vulnerability in Facebook openness algorithms that reveal they routinely do not include political ads in their public archives,” Laura Edelson, one researcher. “”When we began comparing the two sources of political ad information on Facebook—the Facebook Public Ad Library and Ad Library—we found they were full of mistakes and inconsistencies.