The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg regarding the company’s removal of NYC’s Ad Observatory from the platform. The letter was written by Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine.
Facebook posted on its Newsroom that it had disabled the accounts, apps, Pages, and platform access associated with NYU’s Ad Observatory Project and its operators.
Facebook claimed that the researchers were gathering data by creating a browser extension that was programmed to evade Facebook’s detection system and scrape data such as usernames, ads, links to user’s profiles and ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ information, some of which is not publicly viewable on Facebook.”
Mozilla debunked Facebook’s claim, pointing out that Mozilla decided to recommend Ad Observer because their review of it assured them it respected user privacy. According to Mozilla, it does not collect personal posts or information about friends and it does not compile a user profile on its server.
Here are some parts of the letter from the FTC to Mark Zuckerberg:
“I write concerning Facebook’s recent insinuation that its actions against an academic research project conducted by NYU’s Ad Observatory were required by the company’s consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. As the company has since acknowledged, this is inaccurate. The FTC is committed to protecting the privacy of people, and efforts to shield targeted advertising practices from security run counter to that mission…
“…Had you honored your commitment to contact us in advance, we would have pointed out that the consent decree does not bar Facebook from creating exceptions for good-faith research in the public interest. Indeed, the FTC supports efforts to shed light on opaque business practices, especially around surveillance-based advertising…”
Clearly, the FTC does not agree with Facebook’s decision to remove the NYU’s Ad Observatory project from its platform. I wonder what Facebook is trying to hide? It must have something to do with the political ads the Ad Observatory was studying.