Facebook risks war on knowledge

Following the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, the world’s largest social network is stopping researchers accessing its data — with Netvizz the latest casualty. This has significant consequences for the global research community, says Tristan Hotham.

But Facebook sadly appears to be making its platform more opaque, unknown and unaccountable to the public.

Without broader access for other researchers, the social, academic and political consequences are dark.

Netvizz is an internal app within Facebook that uses the social network’s Graph API, a piece of software that provides access to data. Netvizz then organises this data into a spreadsheet format that can be easily read by anyone. Importantly, it doesn’t gather personal data on users.

He added: “independent research of a 2+ billion user platform just got a lot harder.”

Facebook had struck the perfect balance between privacy and access. But the company now appears to be building a wall around its data, not to just to protect users but also to protect itself. And in doing so, Facebook is also protecting the powerful, curtailing our ability to scrutinise and question the influence of politicians, corporations and others with the money to spend on large advertising campaigns. By prioritising privacy over transparency, Facebook is setting up a potential ban on this knowledge.

A legal framework is needed to guarantee Facebook users and researchers at least some access to API data for public pages, especially for those of national interest such as political parties, media organisations and government bodies. Facebook must go further than its current restrictive plans and open its data to help promote research and democratic accountability.

It’s still possible for Facebook to rethink its data policy in a way that respects individual privacy and limits the potential for data misuse, but also promotes transparency, accountability and independent research. If Facebook does not alter course, it will catastrophically undermine our ability not only to understand the social network machine and its millions of pages, but also the entire political and social order that the internet has created.

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