{"id":14194,"date":"2019-02-11T16:26:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T16:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-urged-to-offer-an-api-for-political-ad-transparency-research.html"},"modified":"2019-02-11T16:26:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T16:26:26","slug":"facebook-urged-to-offer-an-api-for-political-ad-transparency-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-urged-to-offer-an-api-for-political-ad-transparency-research.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook urged to offer an API for political ad transparency research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook <\/a> has been called upon to provide good faith researchers with an API to enable them to study how political ads are spreading and being amplified on its platform.<\/p>\n

A coalition of European academics, technologists and human and digital rights groups, led by Mozilla, <\/a> has signed an open letter<\/a> to the company demanding far greater transparency about how Facebook\u2019s platform distributes and amplifies political ads ahead of elections to the European parliament which will take place in May.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached out to Facebook for a reaction to the open letter.<\/p>\n

The company had already\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0it will launch some of its self-styled \u2018election security\u2019 measures in the EU before then \u2014 specifically an authorization and transparency system for political ads.<\/p>\n

Last month<\/a>\u00a0its new global comms guy \u2014 former European politician and one time UK deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg<\/a> \u2014 also announced that, from next month, it will have human-staffed operations centers up and running to monitor how localised political news gets distributed on its platform, with one of the centers located within the EU, in Dublin, Ireland.<\/p>\n

But signatories to the letter argue the company\u2019s heavily PR\u2019ed political ad transparency measures don\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n

They also point out that some of the steps Facebook has taken have blocked independent efforts to monitor its political ad transparency claims.<\/p>\n

Last month the Guardian<\/a> reported on changes Facebook had made to its platform that restricted the ability of an external political transparency campaign group, called\u00a0WhoTargetsMe<\/a>, to monitor and track the flow of political ads on its platform.<\/p>\n

The UK-based campaign group is one of more than 30 groups that have signed the open letter \u2014 calling for Facebook to stop what they couch as \u201charassment of good faith researchers who are building tools to provide greater transparency into the advertising on your platform\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other signatories include the\u00a0Center for Democracy and Technology, <\/a> the\u00a0Open Data Institute and\u00a0Reporters Without Borders.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy\u00a0restricting access to advertising transparency tools\u00a0available to Facebook users, you are\u00a0undermining transparency<\/b>,\u00a0eliminating the choice of your users<\/b>\u00a0to install tools that help them analyse political ads, and\u00a0wielding control over good faith researchers<\/b>\u00a0who try to review data on the platform,\u201d they write.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour\u00a0alternative<\/a>\u00a0to these third party tools provides simple keyword search functionality and does not provide the level of data access necessary for meaningful transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter calls on Facebook to roll out \u201ca functional, open\u00a0Ad Archive API<\/a>\u00a0that enables advanced research and development of tools that analyse political ads served to Facebook users in the EU\u201d \u2014\u00a0and do so by April 1, to enable external developers to have enough time to build transparency tools before the EU elections.<\/p>\n

Signatories also urge the company to ensure that all political ads are \u201cclearly distinguished from other content\u201d, as well as being accompanied by \u201ckey targeting criteria such as sponsor identity and amount spent on the platform in all EU countries\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last year UK policymakers investigating the democratic impacts of online disinformation pressed Facebook<\/a> on the issue of what the information it provides users about the targeting criteria for political ads. They also asked the company why it doesn\u2019t offer users a complete opt-out from receiving political ads. Facebook\u2019s CTO\u00a0Mike Schroepfer was unable \u2014 or unwilling \u2014 to provide clear answers, instead choosing to deflect questions by reiterating the tidbits of data that Facebook has decided it will provide.<\/p>\n

Close to a year later and Facebook users in the majority of European markets are still waiting for even a basic layer of political transparency, as the company has been allowed to continue self regulating at its own pace and \u2014 crucially \u2014 by getting to define what \u2018transparency\u2019 means (and therefore how much of the stuff users get).<\/p>\n

Facebook launched some of these self-styled political ad transparency measures in the UK last fall<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 adding \u2018paid for by\u2019 disclaimers, and saying ads would be retained in an archive for seven years. (Though its verification checks had to be revised after they were quickly shown to be trivially easy to circumvent.)<\/p>\n

Earlier in the year it also briefly suspended accepting ads paid for by foreign entities<\/a> during a referendum on abortion in Ireland.<\/p>\n

However other European elections \u2014 such as regional elections \u2014 have taken place without Facebook users getting access to any information about the political ads they\u2019re seeing or who\u2019s paying for them.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s executive body has its eye on the issue.\u00a0Late last month<\/a> the European Commission published the first batch of monthly \u2018progress reports\u2019 from platforms and ad companies that signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on political disinformation that was announced last December<\/a> \u2014 saying all signatories need to do a lot more and fast.<\/p>\n

On Facebook specifically, the Commission said it needs to provide \u201cgreater clarity\u201d on how it will deploy consumer empowerment tools, and also boost its cooperation with fact-checkers and the research community across the whole EU \u2014 with commissioner Julian King singling the company out for failing to provide independent researchers with access to its data.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s open letter from academics and researchers backs up the Commission\u2019s assessment of feeble first efforts from Facebook and offers further fuel to feed its next monthly assessment.<\/p>\n

The Commission has continued to warn it could legislate on the issue if platforms fail to step up their efforts to tackle political disinformation voluntarily.<\/p>\n

Pressuring platforms to self-regulate has its own critics too, of course \u2014 who point out that it does nothing to tackle the core underlying problem of platforms having too much power in the first place\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

The problem isn\u2019t Zuckerberg makes poor decisions on behalf of the public. It\u2019s that he\u2019s making them in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 11, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

The facts about Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/dkQdklqHf4Y\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has been called upon to provide good faith researchers with an API to enable them to study how political ads are spreading and being amplified on its platform. A <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-14194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t