Nathalie Maréchal writes:

Another day, another Facebook accountability scandal.

On Wednesday, Facebook shut down the accounts of NYU researchers Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy on the grounds that their Ad Observer tool violated Facebook users’ privacy. At first blush, this seems absurd: the users in question voluntarily installed the Ad Observer plug-in in their browser for the express purpose of sharing targeting info related to the political ads they see on Facebook with the researchers.

Dig a little deeper, and it turns out that the “users” whose privacy Facebook is so concerned about are actually advertisers—that is to say, paying customers. It is reasonable to assume the company might not be enthusiastic about scrutiny of its customers’ ad-targeting practices, or any research that might identify more discrepancies between Facebook’s stated ad targeting rules and what the company allows in practice come to light. And so Facebook did what it so often does: it attempted to disguise its self-serving behavior as pious concern for user privacy. In this case, it’s blindingly obvious that Facebook is hiding behind its 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission to shut down research on the company’s Achilles heel: the utter anarchy of its targeted ads business.

Those of us who are concerned about democracy, civil and human rights, and corporate accountability in the tech sector should take this as evidence that the NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy group is on the right track. We need more scrutiny of the online advertising sector. In fact, we need to reframe the “social media governance” conversation as one about regulating ad tech. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and the rest exist for one purpose: to generate ad revenue. Everything else is a means for producing ad inventory. [Continue reading…]