Meta has assured that his Content Library and Application Programming Interface (API) of this service include useful and quality data for researchers, with which meets regulatory requirements in terms of transparency and data sharing, following the closure of its CrowdTangle tool.
CrowdTangle is a free tool that makes it easy to monitoring, analyzing and reporting on what happens with public content on social media and has been commonly used by journalists, media outlets and other organizations.
The company led by Mark Zuckerberg bought this solution in 2016, ensuring that it would continue to invest in and operate the service so that more publishers and creators could take advantage of its capabilities.
However, Meta reduced support for this service with the goal of retiring it and continue investing in the development of “even more valuable” tools for researchers, according to the company’s spokesperson, Erin McPike, in statements reported by Bloomberg in June 2022.
Later, in March of this year, sources related to the company revealed that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp intended to permanently shut down CrowdTangle on August 14, 2024.
In this framework, during the month of April, the European Commission initiated a procedure for infringement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) against the company led by Mark Zuckerberg, in which, among other aspects, it is began investigating its plan to take down CrowdTangle and “deficiencies in Meta’s provision of access to researchers to publicly available data.”
In response to this research, Meta deployed new features in the data tracking tool at the end of May this year. However, as expected, proceeded to close CrowdTangle last Wednesday, August 14, replacing this tool with its Meta Content Library.
Now, Meta has shared a brief statement on its Transparency Center in which it assures that its Content Library is a service with which offers information with “useful and quality data” for researchersso it is complies with regulatory requirements regarding transparency and data sharing.
According to the technology company, the Meta Content Library and its API “always ensure that Meta’s rigorous standards for privacy and security are maintained“. He also stressed that it includes more complete data, as it adds multimedia content such as Instagram reels.
Furthermore, as detailed on Wednesday in a statement on its website, the cessation of this service has been carried out as DSA result and with the gradual elimination of CrowdTangle, Meta will be able to focus their resources on the new research tools in the Content Library and API.
However, both political institutions and researchers have expressed their Discontent over CrowdTangle’s closureclaiming that the access to information is more limited and the tool is more tedious to use, which makes its purpose of providing information more difficult.
Specifically, as stated by the non-profit organization Mozilla, in an open letter addressed to Meta, CrowdTangle is the tool used by “tens of thousands of journalists, watchdogs and election observers” to oversee the integrity of elections around the world.”
Therefore, as they have detailed, its closure means the prohibition of the outside world, including electoral integrity experts, from seeing what happens on Facebook and Instagram during the one they have defined as “the most important election year in history.”
With this, they have denounced that Meta will allow “almost all external efforts” to identify and prevent political disinformation to be silencedas well as incitements to violence and online harassment against women and minorities.
Along these lines, according to a report prepared by the executive director of algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, Cameron Hickey, and picked up by TechCrunch, the new replacement tool “only has 10 percent of the usability of CrowdTangle.” Along these lines, this same report highlights that the Meta Content Library offers data similar to CrowdTangle, but “only 1 percent of the functions.”
Likewise, as they have denounced, another point against it is its accessibility, since many researchers, academics and journalists have access to the Meta Content Library is prohibited.
As the company explains on its website, for To gain access to the Meta Content Library API, users must submit an access request, which is independently reviewed and processed by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) through the Social Media Archive (SOMAR).
BRUSSELS QUESTIONS THE CLOSURE OF CROWDTANGLE
With all this, after the interruption of CrowdTangle, the The European Commission has sent Meta a request for information (RFI) on Friday under the DSAasking the company to provide more information about the steps it has taken to comply with its obligations to give researchers access to publicly accessible data on Facebook and Instagram’s online interface, as well as its plans to update its election and civic discourse tracking features.
Specifically, the European body has requested information on Meta’s Content Library tool and its API, including issues such as its eligibility criteria, application process, the data it grants access to and its functionalities.
So, Meta must respond to this request with the necessary information before September 6 of this year.The European Commission could then take temporary measures if it considers that Meta has not complied with its obligations, or agree that Meta should correct the deficiencies reported.