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When Fb disabled the accounts of New York College researchers who had been investigating misinformation and political advertisements on the platform, the social-media big claimed it did so to adjust to a consent decree that it beforehand agreed to with the Federal Commerce Fee. “We took these actions to cease unauthorized scraping and defend folks’s privateness in step with our privateness program below the FTC Order,” Fb wrote in its clarification of the account suspensions. Fb stated it “disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform entry related to NYU’s Advert Observatory Undertaking and its operators.”
However Fb’s declare that the FTC order compelled it to droop the researchers is fake, FTC Bureau of Client Safety Appearing Director Samuel Levine wrote in a letter to Fb CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday. The FTC order did require Fb to create a privateness program, however there was no requirement that may have compelled Fb to close down the NYU analysis challenge. Regardless of that, Fb’s assertion that it suspended the accounts “in step with our privateness program below the FTC Order” conveys the false message that Fb had no alternative within the matter.
Levine’s three-paragraph letter to Zuckerberg stated:
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