We can observe that Facebook is increasingly under pressure about its political impact. This interesting Mashable article ‘Facebook wants NYU researchers to stop sharing the political ad data it keeps secret‘ provides insights about how secret the platform is about how it is handling political ads.
Apparently the fact that New York University is conducting research and publishing key statistics on Facebook political ads is not agreeable to Facebook itself who probably would prefer to wash its laundry internally.
“Not only do you see how much money each campaign is spending; you also get a breakdown of topics the ads for each candidate cover, the dollar amount going into each one, and the specifics of how ads are targeted toward each candidate’s hoped-for voters. It’s not necessarily comprehensive information, since it depends on how much data volunteers are able to gather. But it’s more transparency than Facebook has provided on the political ad spending hosted by the platform.”
Apparently such transparency is a problem to the network, when it should certainly be public knowledge as a way to check that elections are not unduly influenced.
The reticence of Facebook to encourage such research is another clue that something needs to be changed in the way it tends to influence users.
