Facebook bans researchers who slammed it for spreading misinformation

Facebook has banned the accounts of New York University researchers who criticised the tech giant

Facebook says it banned the researchers because of the threat they posed over privacy protection. However, the researchers have slammed the social media platform over this move.

Researcher Laura Edelson says the move is an attempt to silence them and other researchers who use the tool they developed to analyse the spread of misinformation. 

“The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy,” she said.

“Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems on its platform”

“If this episode demonstrates anything it’s that Facebook should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them,” said Edelson.

“Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief that we have always put first in our work, as a pretext for doing this.”

It follows months of battling between the tech giant and the researchers over the Ad Observer tool they developed. The tool allows Facebook users to share limited anonymous information about the political ads shown to them by the platform.

“Facebook should not be able to cynically invoke user privacy”

Another one of the researchers Damon McCoy says that Facebook shouldn’t be able to invoke user privacy to “shut down research that puts them in an unflattering light”.

“Particularly when the ‘users’ Facebook is talking about are advertisers who have consented to making their ads public,” McCoy said.