Facebook released their new archive this week to improve the overall transparency. Besides, they also announced that they will soon develop a tool to provide greater access to the third-party groups.
But on a contrary, giving access to their deeper network to the outside app developers already created major problems for Facebook. And to solve that issue, they came with a new policy to moderate its approach towards the political ads.
Brainlink’s chief technology officer and cyber civil rights activist, Raj Goel, already expressed his thought on that matter. According to him, Facebook can only prove the seriousness by letting the neutral developers access and analyze their API to make sure that the platform is safe. He said “The billion-dollar question is whether or not Facebook will invite objective third parties, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to examine the system,” and added, “That would lend it a lot more credibility and a higher trust factor.”
Facebook’s new archive will accommodate all the data about any ad that falls under the political category. The users, while clicking the political ad, will have the access to the archive where they can fully understand that who is behind the ad campaign and how much money is actually spent on it. The archive will also feature the full details of the gender, age, and location of the users who already viewed the ad campaign.
Facebook’s product director, Rob Leathern, said that “Outside experts, researchers, and academics can help by analyzing political advertising on Facebook,” and added, “That’s why we are working closely with our newly formed election research commission and other stakeholders to launch an API for the archive.”
But, while talking about the deeper access in the ad archive and also about its beneficiaries, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy Steve Satterfield said “We are figuring these things out right now in conjunction with a number of partners who are very interested in getting API access,” and added “We are excited about the prospect of building this tool because we will give watchdog groups, researchers, academics and others the kind of robust access to the archive that they have been asking for.”