Facebook Gives Researchers 'Full Access' for Election Studies
July 11 2018 - 7:12PM
Dow Jones News
By Douglas MacMillan
Facebook Inc. will give a newly formed group of academics "full
access" to data on its 2.2 billion users for the purpose of
identifying areas of research about the effects of social media on
elections and democracy, the group said Wednesday.
Social Science One, a group formed earlier this year with
backing from nonprofits including The John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation and The Charles Koch Foundation, said it would start
accepting proposals from researchers for funding.
Facebook is participating in the effort as part of what company
officials have said is a renewed commitment to transparency and
stamping out abuses on the platform.
In making the alliance, Facebook is continuing to work with
outside researchers even as it grapples with the fallout from
revelations that data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly
accessed and retained user data. That data were initially gathered
by a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge.
The founders of Social Science One said they have put safeguards
in place to prevent future abuses or leaks. The group says it will
remove personally identifying information from any of the data sets
it gives to outside researchers and that no data will ever leave
Facebook's servers. It will also closely monitor any studies that
involve sensitive user information.
But to determine which data sets to release, a half-dozen
primary researchers will have broad access to Facebook's
proprietary user data, said Gary King, a social science professor
at Harvard University and one of the co-chairs of the research
group.
"We would have the same access that employees would have," Mr.
King said in an interview.
A Facebook spokesman said the researchers with database access
are contractually bound not to disclose any data about the company
or its users, and that their activity will be monitored for
potential privacy breaches.
Social Science One plans to make grants to other groups of
researchers who request access to select sets of user data from
Facebook. The group's first research project involves combing
through one million gigabytes of information about the links users
have clicked on over the past year to find patterns about fake
news.
Giving researchers access to data raises questions around user
privacy, but it also gives the public a valuable glimpse into
Facebook's practices, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa
Clara University.
"There's no way to really hold internet companies accountable
without getting access to their data," Mr. Goldman said.
Social Science One said Facebook wouldn't have the ability to
review or reject any studies that result from the researchers'
work.
Facebook is still attempting to locate the app developers who
had access to large amounts of user data and find out how they used
the information between 2007 and 2015, when the company officially
cut data access for all apps.
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 11, 2018 18:57 ET (22:57 GMT)
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