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Facebook has committed to help academics understand "the broader impact of social media on democracy." The thing is, in order for these studies to take place, academics need data.
Facebook promised to provide access to the data when it announced the project more than a year ago. Many researchers are still waiting.
"Promises made, promises broken," said Joan Donovan of Harvard as we discussed the latest Facebook transparency initiative to face delays and criticism.
The company is largely in control: it has the data and decides what to share, or not. And that's the problem, according to Donovan, director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center.
The project launched in April 2018. The first winning research proposals were announced a year later. Facebook told me it has roughly 20 staffers working on the Social Science One project and remains totally committed. But as I reveal in a new story, academics are still waiting for key data needed to start their work. Funders are nervous. There's disappointment Facebook will not provide certain data it initially promised. Some worry the whole thing could fall apart.
"There has to be enforcement at the level of government about transparency and social media. And if there isn't, then this pattern will replicate itself over and over again," she said.
Regulations such as GDPR set out some rules. But they don't cover things such as what information companies have to disclose about, say, disinformation operations on their platform, or whether they should allow people to completely delete certain behavioral data from servers. Those two examples just from this week.
Donovan says it's time for regulators to set the rules of the road. In the meantime, researchers around the world are waiting for Facebook data and don't know when it will come.
—Craig Silverman
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