Facebook's parent company, Meta, announced the impending closure of CrowdTangle, a vital tool used by journalists and researchers to monitor the spread of misinformation and disinformation across social media platforms, as per Wired. The decision comes amid growing concerns about the integrity of information ahead of the upcoming US presidential election.
Closure timing
Meta's decision to terminate CrowdTangle, effective August 14, 2024, comes at a critical juncture, with only months until the highly anticipated US election. The decision has sparked outrage from a variety of sources, given the tool's critical role in enabling transparency and accountability in digital spaces.
While Meta proposes replacing CrowdTangle with a new Content Library API, critics argue that the substitute lacks essential functionality. Despite Meta spokesperson Andy Stone's assurances that the new API is comprehensive, concerns remain, particularly about its accessibility to commercial newsrooms.
Calls for data sharing
Brandon Silverman, co-founder and former CEO of CrowdTangle, talks about the necessity of compelling tech platforms to open up their data to external scrutiny.
Silverman underscored how important legislative intervention is in establishing clear expectations for data accessibility, calling for a collaborative approach involving regulators, elected officials, and civil society.
“My takeaway when I left was that if you want to do this work in a way that really serves civil society in the way we need it to, you can't do it inside the companies—and Meta was doing more than almost anyone else. It’s abundantly clear that we need our regulators and elected officials to decide what we, as a society, want and expect from these platforms and to make those [demands] legally required,” Brandon Silverman stated.
Silverman cited the European Union's Digital Services Act as a promising model for increasing transparency and urged international cooperation to develop standardized data access protocols.
“The European Union's sweeping Digital Services Act has a bunch of transparency requirements around data sharing. One of those they sometimes call the CrowdTangle provision—it requires qualifying platforms to provide real-time access to public data,” Silverman said.
Despite recent setbacks in data transparency from platforms such as Twitter and Meta, Silverman remains optimistic about the emergence of new regulatory frameworks to address evolving challenges.
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