Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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Facebook was widely criticized by experts, activists, and lawmakers for its decision to shut down the group’s work, especially given that they had just recently begun work on helping to track the dissemination of COVID-19 disinformation on the platform, which is a problem Facebook has been unable to cope with since the pandemic began.Sen. Amy Klobuchar told VICE News the decision was “deeply troubling” while an activist group called the Real Facebook Oversight Group, said the decision was reminiscent of an “ authoritarian government… cracking down on its critics.”Levine ended his letter to Zuckerberg with a warning, telling him to avoid using the company’s privacy deal with the FTC as a way of blocking other efforts to reveal issues with the platform. “The FTC supports efforts to shed light on opaque business practices, especially around surveillance-based advertising,” Levine wrote. “While it is not our role to resolve individual disputes between Facebook and third parties, we hope that the company is not invoking privacy—much less the FTC consent order—as a pretext to advance other aims.”
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Now Edelson and her fellow researcher, Damon McCoy, are calling on Facebook ro reinstate their accounts. “In light of the FTC’s clarification that Facebook is not required to take enforcement action, we call on Facebook to stop obstructing and instead assist our research and that of other researchers studying the platform in the public interest,” McCoy said in an emailed statement.Facebook did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment on the FTC’s criticism or the calls to reinstate the researchers’ accounts.