Facebook Border Finder: The Standard

Facebook has restricted access to a controversial feature to search the vast content of the social network – a tool that raised privacy concerns, but was also used for research and journalism. 39; investigation.

The main social network has acknowledged this week having "suspended" some elements of its "graph search", a feature introduced in 2013 that has attracted criticism for having uncovered publications and other content on the Internet. help from a simple request.
But looking for graphics has proven to be an important tool for researchers, human rights activists and journalists. It has been used to track the activities of suspected war criminals and human traffickers and to monitor extremists.
"We suspended some aspects of graph search late last week," a Facebook spokesman said. "We are in discussion with some researchers to find out more about how they used this tool."

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Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who follows social media, said the measure was the latest to tighten data access on Facebook since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the consulting firm that hijacked the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users.
The new restrictions are making it harder for researchers to find Facebook posts on topics ranging from war crimes to anorexia, to the anti-vaccine movement, Grygiel said.
According to Grygiel, this initiative can be seen as a promotion of privacy, but it also limits the ability of researchers to investigate Facebook and its efforts to eliminate hate speech and extremist content.
"Researchers like me used a social graph to show how bad moderation of Facebook content was," she told AFP. "It may be a public relations initiative because Facebook is tired of everyone realizing how bad their privacy is."
After being introduced in 2013, graphic research immediately drew the attention of privacy activists as a "scary" tool that could allow harbadment or unwanted disclosures.

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Over the years, Facebook has made changes to the search for graphics and has offered users privacy settings limiting the choice of information to update. The company has not responded to an AFP request to specify the most recent changes or the reason for the new strategy.
Legitimate research or abuse?
"This tool has been used for both improper purposes and for legitimate research purposes," said Adi Kamdar, legal expert at the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University.
Kamdar said Facebook's decision could be troubling because of his "persistent obstruction of good faith journalism and platform research."
The Knight Institute sent a letter this week to Facebook, signed by some 200 journalists and researchers asking the social network for better access to study the platform.

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"Digital research and journalism serve the public interest by allowing the public to better understand social media platforms," ​​the letter said.
"These platforms – and Facebook's in particular – have a powerful but poorly understood influence on public discourse and, by extension, on societies around the world."
The letter urged Facebook to create a "safe haven" for some researchers and journalists "that would allow us to do our job without hindering Facebook's ability to protect the privacy of its users and the integrity of its platform."
Kamdar said the letter had been written before Facebook's last change and that the new restrictions "could be considered a setback" for research, for example, on how Facebook's algorithms and recommendations work.
The investigative journalist Michael Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors far right groups, asked if this change could limit the ability to track hate speech and violent activities on Facebook.

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"It's important to remember that these users generally want as many people as possible to see their content," Hayden said. "The main concern is that these changes allow them to secretly organize themselves on the platform, which would particularly concern me with people who plot violence and terrorism."
Casey Fiesler, a professor and researcher in social computing at the University of Colorado, said that Facebook should not ban access to its data for research purposes, but should be selective.
"Any tool that people use to gather data can be used for good or bad ends," said Fiesler.
"I would prefer ethical decisions to be made about a particular use of the data rather than closing them completely."

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