{"id":949,"date":"2024-08-15T08:45:20","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T08:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=949"},"modified":"2024-08-15T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T11:14:30","slug":"meta-kills-crowdtangle-despite-watchdog-warnings-ahead-of-u-s-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"Meta kills CrowdTangle despite watchdog warnings ahead of U.S. election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company\u2019s platforms.<\/p>\n

\n

Wednesday\u2019s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch and NYU\u2019s Center for Social Media & Politics, sent a letter to the company asking that it keep the tool running through at least January so it would be available through the U.S. presidential elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision jeopardizes essential pre- and post-election oversight mechanisms and undermines Meta\u2019s transparency efforts during this critical period, and at a time when social trust and digital democracy are alarmingly fragile,\u201d the\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

CrowdTangle, \u201chas been an essential tool in helping researchers parse through the vast amount of information on the platform and identify harmful content and threats,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

In March, the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation sent Meta a similar letter asking it to keep the tool, which was available for free, functioning until January. That letter was also signed by several dozen groups and individual academic researchers.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, CrowdTangle has represented an industry best practice for real-time platform transparency. It has become a lifeline for understanding how disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression spread on Facebook, undermining civic discourse and democracy,\u201d the\u00a0Mozilla letter<\/a>\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Meta has released an alternative to CrowdTangle, called the Meta Content Library. But access to it is limited to academic researchers and nonprofits, which excludes most news organizations. Critics have also complained that it\u2019s not as useful as CrowdTangle \u2014 at least not yet.<\/p>\n

Nick Clegg, Meta\u2019s president of global affairs, said in a\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0last week that the company has been gathering feedback about Meta Content Library from \u201chundreds of researchers in order to make it more user-friendly and help them find the data they need for their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta said Wednesday that CrowdTangle doesn\u2019t provide a complete picture of what is happening on its platforms and said its new tools are more comprehensive.<\/p>\n

Meta acquired CrowdTangle in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[1565,1562,31,1561,1545,668,1564,1563],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nMeta kills CrowdTangle despite watchdog warnings ahead of U.S. election - Frisco Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"CrowdTangle's shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=949\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meta kills CrowdTangle despite watchdog warnings ahead of U.S. election - 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