Facebook provided incomplete data to disinformation researchers

Disinformation researchers who have relied on the data Facebook provides them may have wasted months or even years of work. This is because the social network has provided them with erroneous and incomplete information about how users interact with the posts and links on the website, according to The New York Times.

Facebook has given academics access to its data for the past two years to track the spread of disinformation on its platform. It promised researchers transparency and access to all interaction with users, but the data the company provided them apparently only included interactions of about half of its users in the United States. Additionally, most of the users whose interactions were included in the reports are those who engage sufficiently with the political publications to clearly express their inclinations.

In an email to researchers The temperature seen, Facebook apologized for the “inconvenience [it] may have caused. The company also told them that it was fixing the problem, but that it could take weeks due to the sheer volume of data it has to process. Facebook told researchers, however, that the data they were receiving for users outside of the United States was not inaccurate.

Facebook spokesman Mavis Jones blamed the inaccuracy of the data on a “technical error,” which the company appears to be “working quickly to resolve.” As The temperature Note, it was the associate professor of the University of Urbino, Fabio Giglietto, who first discovered the inaccuracy. Giglietto compared the data given to researchers with the “Widely Viewed Content Report” published publicly by the social network in August and found that the results did not match.

Other researchers raised concerns after the publication of this report. Alice Marwick, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, said Committed that they could not verify these results because they did not have access to the data used by Facebook. The company reportedly organized a call with researchers on Friday to apologize. Megan Squire, one of those researchers, said The temperature: “From a human point of view, there were 47 people on this call today and each of these projects is in danger, and some are completely destroyed.”

Some researchers used their own tools to collect information for their research, but in at least one case Facebook cut their access. In August, Facebook deactivated accounts associated with the NYU Ad Observatory project. The team used a browser extension to collect information about political ads, but the social network said it was “unauthorized scratching.” At the time, Laura Edelson, the project’s principal investigator, said Committed that Facebook is silencing the team because its “work often draws attention to issues on its platform.” Edelson added, “If this episode shows anything, it’s that Facebook shouldn’t have a veto over who is allowed to study them.”