Washington: In a recent announcement, Meta the parent company of Facebook, revealed its intention to discontinue CrowdTangle, a popular social media monitoring and transparency tool. The move slated to take effect on August 14, 2024, has sparked significant debate among journalists, researchers, and civil society organizations, especially with the upcoming US presidential polls.
Journalists and scholars are now able to monitor the spread of false and misleading content on social media thanks in large part to Crowd Tangle. Concerns have been expressed on how this shutdown may affect attempts to hold tech companies responsible for disseminating false information.
META claims to be implementing a new Content Library API in place of CrowdTangle. However with this change, non-profits and researchers will need to apply to access the company’s data. The Mozilla Foundation and a number of other civil society organizations have voiced criticism, claiming that the new product is devoid of many of CrowdTangle’s crucial features. They have requested that Meta continue to use the original tool through January 2025.
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, responded to the criticism by defending the choice and claiming that the content library will be available to academics, election integrity specialists, and organizations, and will offer more thorough data than CrowdTangle. According to a Wired report, Brandon Silverman, the co-founder and former CEO of CrowdTangle, stated his opinion that platforms should expose their data to outside inspection. Silverman continued to work on the product following Facebook’s acquisition in 2016. He underlined the necessity for legislators and regulators to create legal mandates for data accessibility and platform openness.
Silverman emphasized the Digital Services Act of the European Union, which stipulates rules for data sharing transparency. He saw an increasing trend of platforms, such as TikTok and Alibaba, to provide tools that allow independent academics to access public content in real-time. Notwithstanding, Silverman conceded that putting such controls into practice would be difficult, pointing to Twitter’s stringent policies around data access and Meta’s withdrawal of data sharing programs. The speaker underscored the significance of maintaining an equilibrium between data accessibility and privacy protection, advocating for increased public participation and discourse on the matter.
Concerns about the possible effects on accountability and transparency in the digital space remain as Meta gets ready to shut down CrowdTangle, especially in the run-up to big political events like the US presidential election. The ruling highlights more discussions about the obligations of internet corporations and the necessity of government regulation to protect democratic processes in the digital era.
