Facebook recently blocked a researcher from viewing advertisements from its website. It has been done in order to help US Congress to probe misinformation spread on its platform Via Russian ads during the presidential poll.
Facebook has blocked a researcher from viewing the ads on its social media site. The company deleted him and his Posts from the public records, the researcher had looked at the information to study the reach of advertisements that were related to an alleged Kremlin campaign.
The report published on Wednesday revealed that ,” There were posts downloaded by Analyst Jonathan Albright from six of the Facebook pages before learning information from all 470 accounts was no longer publically available” . He further added that the information was not meant to be publicized. It was considered a bug by the company as he was able to find and download data through Crowd Tangle, which is a Facebook owned Social media analysis tool.
According the reports from CNet, there were a few flaws in Crowd Tangle that allowed Albright to download data from the inactive pages.
A Facebook representative assured that there are privacy commitments that will make the inactive content inaccessible. Recently it has been announced by the US House intelligence committee that there are around 3000 Russian ads that were posted during 2016 presidential elections that will be make public very soon. This decision was taken in the meeting that was held between US Congress leader and face Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Next Post