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| Facebook provided researchers with inaccurate data |
The New York Times reported that Facebook apologized to disinformation researchers for providing incorrect and incomplete data to study how users interact with posts and links on its platform.
Three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced a plan to share data with researchers about how people interact with social media posts and links so that researchers can investigate misinformation on the site.
The researchers used data from several studies over the past two years to examine the prevalence of misinformation and misinformation.
Contrary to what the company has told researchers, the data it provided appears to contain information about about half (but not all) of its US users.
The company told researchers that data from users outside the US that was also shared appears to be incorrect.
The Times reported that members of the open and transparent research team on the platform contacted the researchers and apologized for the error. Some researchers questioned whether this error should sabotage the research, or if it was just an oversight.
The company apologized in an email to the researchers, saying: "We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to provide as much assistance as possible."
It added that it had updated the registry to fix the problem. However, due to the huge amount of data, it will take several weeks to complete the task.
Facebook provided researchers with inaccurate data
The errors in the data were first discovered by researchers at the University of Urbino in Italy. Compare a report the company released in August with data made available to researchers. According to the Times, the records do not match.
A spokesman for the company told the newspaper: The error was due to a technical error. The company proactively notified the affected partners and promptly resolved the issue.
The August 18 report, which was compared by researchers at the University of Urbino, is related to transparency, showing the most viewed content in the news feed of the entire April platform through June of this year, the second quarter of this year.
However, the Times noted that the platform delayed the report for the first quarter and that the company's description in the report was not satisfactory. Facebook published the report and commented on the report.
In August, the company banned academic researchers from the New York University Advertising Observatory project on its platform. This happened after the group's Ad Observer browser plugin highlighted the issue.
The Ad Monitor investigation found that Facebook did not disclose who paid for certain political ads on its site.