‘Serious setback’: Meta shuts down misinformation monitoring tool in poll year

Washington:

CrowdTangle, a digital tool considered crucial for tracking viral lies, will be deactivated by Facebook owner Meta in a major election year, a move that researchers fear will disrupt efforts to detect expected political misinformation.

The tech giant said CrowdTangle will be unavailable after August 14, less than three months before the U.S. election. The Palo Alto company plans to replace it with a new tool that researchers say lacks the same functionality and is largely inaccessible to news organizations.

CrowdTangle has been a game-changer for years, providing researchers and journalists with crucial real-time transparency into the spread of conspiracy theories and hate speech on platforms owned by influential Meta like Facebook and Instagram.

Experts say the move is in line with a trend in the tech industry to reduce transparency and security measures, and that removing surveillance tools is a major blow as dozens of countries hold elections this year, a period when bad actors typically spread more falsehoods. than ever before.

Melanie Smith, research director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told AFP: “With nearly half the world’s population expected to vote in elections, cutting off access to CrowdTangle will severely limit independent oversight of the harms.”

“This represents a serious step backwards for transparency on social media platforms.”

Meta will replace CrowdTangle with a new content library, which is still under development.

Some in the tech industry, including former CrowdTangle CEO Brandon Silverman, say the tool is not yet an effective replacement, especially in an election where AI lies could become rampant.

Silverman told AFP that Meta had not established “whole new forces” to protect the integrity of the election and called for “openness and transparency”.

“direct threat”

Researchers say that during recent election cycles, CrowdTangle alerted them to harmful activity, including foreign interference, online harassment, and incitement to violence.

By its own admission, Meta, which acquired CrowdTangle in 2016, helped state officials identify misinformation during the 2019 Louisiana election, such as inaccurate voting times posted online.

During the 2020 presidential election, the company provided the tool to U.S. state election officials to help them “quickly identify misinformation, voter interference and suppression.”

The tool also provides the public with a dashboard to track content posted by major candidates on their official and campaign pages.

The global non-profit Mozilla Foundation lamented the risk of losing these features forever, requesting that CrowdTangle be retained until at least January 2025 in an open letter to Meta.

“Abandoning CrowdTangle when the content library lacks CrowdTangle’s core functionality undermines fundamental principles of transparency,” the letter signed by dozens of tech regulators and researchers said.

It added that the new tool’s lack of CrowdTangle features, including powerful search flexibility and decommissioning capabilities, would pose a “direct threat” to the integrity of the election.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the letter’s claims were “completely false” and insisted the content library would contain “more comprehensive data than CrowdTangle” and would be made available to academics and nonprofit elections Integrity expert.

‘A lot of worries’

Meta has stayed away from news on its platform and will not provide new tools to for-profit media.

Journalists have used CrowdTangle in the past to investigate public health crises as well as human rights abuses and natural disasters.

Meta’s decision to cut ties with journalists comes after many used CrowdTangle to report unflattering stories, including its poor moderation efforts and how its gaming apps were filled with pirated content.

Tim Harper, senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told AFP that CrowdTangle has been an important source of data that helps “hold Meta accountable for enforcing its policies.”

As part of Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, organizations debunking misinformation, including AFP, will have access to the content library.

But other researchers and nonprofits will have to apply for access or find expensive alternatives. Two researchers who spoke on condition of anonymity told AFP that in one-on-one meetings with Meta officials, they asked company officials for a firm commitment.

Carlos Hernandez-Echevarria, director of the Spanish non-profit organization Maldita, said: “While most fact-checkers already working with Meta will be able to use this new tool, it is not clear whether it will be used by many independent researchers who already work with Meta. Worried about losing the functionality of CrowdTangle.”, told AFP.

“That raises a lot of concerns.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)