Facebook facilitates the task of researchers to study its platform, including groups of fringes and other “non-traditional” movements, with a new API of researcher. The API, which will be available later this year, will facilitate the task of academics to study shared content in public groups and pages.
It comes over three years after Facebook closed a large part of its platform following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which made it more difficult to study the social network, a trend of society that now wants to reverse.
The new API will allow “qualifying researchers” to study pages, groups and events to the United States, including the text of the specific positions of the users (Facebook says it will hide the usernames and the @ -Finds to protect the confidentiality of users.) Researchers will also have access to follow-up metrics and group engagement statistics, events and pages.
“It has been specially designed for researchers,” Chaya Nayak said, responsible for Facebook’s research and transparency. “Compared to other search data offers such as Crowdtanger, the researcher API will include public data, events and US group data on Facebook, regardless of the follower count. This is important because it will allow The study of fringed and non-traditional movements as they evolve, rather than only once they become important on the platform. “
Facebook’s manipulation of Fringe groups was an important problem over the past year. The company has been widely criticized for failing to prevent Qanon, once considered a movement of fringes, until it has passed into the dominant current. And as a result of the election, Facebook did not recognize the dangers posed by the movement “stop theft”, which fed the violence on January 6th.
Allow researchers specializing in misinformation or extremism to study smaller groups could help Facebook better prepared for the next group of dangerous fringes that tries to organize on its platform. Although the researcher’s API covers only the United States only covers the United States to start, Nayak stated that society plans to expand it to “other geographies”. She also stated that in the future, Facebook would use research information to consider “changes to our product”.
Facebook’s relationship with researchers who want to study the platform have sometimes been stretched in recent years. Some academics stated that the Company makes it too difficult to access the limited data it provides. And the social network has been widely criticized to try to prevent researchers from the University of New York from studying the company’s political targeting system last year.
In particular, it appears that the new researcher API does not provide additional access to advertisements or targeted information. Instead, it is mainly oriented towards previously public positions. But if the company makes the API widely available for researchers, it could always be incredibly useful for those who study misinformation, extremism or other problems that affect Facebook.
