Facebook suspends accounts of NYU researchers who’ve criticized platform

Facebook has suspended the accounts of New York University researchers who had been critical of the tech giant, effectively cutting off their research into the political ads and the spread of misinformation on the platform.

Facebook said the decision was made because of issues the researchers posed over privacy protection — but the researchers, Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy, slammed the social media platform and said the move is an attempt to silence them and other researchers who use the tool they developed to assess the spread of disinformation.

“The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems on its platform,” Edelson said in a statement. “Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief that we have always put first in our work, as a pretext for doing this. If this episode demonstrates anything it’s that Facebook should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them.”

The suspension followed months of battling between the tech giant and the researchers over the Ad Observer tool the researchers developed. The tool allows Facebook users to voluntarily share limited anonymous information about the political ads shown to them by the platform and allows researchers and journalists to follow trends in Facebook political advertising.