WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Chris Coons (D-DE), and 15 members raised concerns about Meta’s decision to end access to CrowdTangle, a Meta-owned transparency tool that has allowed researchers and journalists to view and study public content on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms on a wide range of issues, including foreign influence campaigns, terrorist threats, and mental health. In a letter to Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, the members detailed significant limitations in the Meta Content Library, Meta’s replacement for CrowdTangle, and urged Meta to continue access to CrowdTangle for at least another six months while additional functionality and access is developed for the Meta Content Library.
“In light of threats to our national security, growing concern about the effect of social media on our children and their mental health, the advent and proliferation of generative artificial intelligence, and important elections coming up in the United States and elsewhere in the world, Meta (like other platforms) has a responsibility to ensure that the public, independent researchers, journalists, and policymakers can study and address the impact that platforms and their algorithms are having in these and other dimensions, in both positive and negative ways,” wrote the members.
The members also called on Meta to answer a number of questions as to why the company is ending the tool at such a pivotal time for social and digital media use. After August 14, 2024, CrowdTangle will no longer be accessible.
“Over the past several years, CrowdTangle has been an important step towards such transparency for public content on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, and Meta deserves credit for making this tool available at a time when many of its counterparts offer no comparable alternative,” continued the members. “CrowdTangle data has been the basis of hundreds of academic research papers (including in Nature and Science) and has been referenced in thousands of news articles by journalists reporting on social media and other topics. Some of us cosponsor the bipartisan Platform Accountability and Transparency Act(S.1876), which, among other things, would require platforms to offer a tool similar to CrowdTangle in recognition of the value that this kind of transparency provides.”
Cassidy and Coons were joined by U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Peter Welch (D-VT), Edward Markey (D-MA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Mark Warner (D-VA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), and U.S. Representatives Lori Trahan (D-MA-03), Neal Dunn (R-FL-02), Anna Eshoo (D-CA-16), Sean Casten (D-IL-06), Adam Schiff (D-CA-30), and Seth Moulton (D-MA-06) in signing the letter.
Last year, Cassidy, Coons, and four Senate colleagues introduced the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA), a bill that would require social media companies to share more data with the public and researchers. A section of PATA would specifically require major platforms to make a tool like CrowdTangle available to study public content.
Read the full letter here or below:
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:
We write with concern about Meta’s announced plan to end access on August 14, 2024 to CrowdTangle, a powerful transparency tool it owns to help the public analyze and understand content that is being widely disseminated on Facebook and other platforms. We urge Meta to, at a minimum, postpone this plan for six months and provide further information about its plans and commitment to ensure sufficient transparency for independent research going forward.
The imperative to understand how social media platforms are affecting society has never been greater than it is today. In light of threats to our national security, growing concern about the effect of social media on our children and their mental health, the advent and proliferation of generative artificial intelligence, and important elections coming up in the United States and elsewhere in the world, Meta (like other platforms) has a responsibility to ensure that the public, independent researchers, journalists, and policymakers can study and address the impact that platforms and their algorithms are having in these and other dimensions, in both positive and negative ways.
Over the past several years, CrowdTangle has been an important step towards such transparency for public content on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, and Meta deserves credit for making this tool available at a time when many of its counterparts offer no comparable alternative. CrowdTangle data has been the basis of hundreds of academic research papers (including in Nature and Science) and has been referenced in thousands of news articles by journalists reporting on social media and other topics. For example, CrowdTangle data has been used to help researchers to understand and expose Russian-linked influence operations in Africa (that Facebook then appropriately shut down); to help journalists to report on the effects of COVID-19-related shutdowns on mental health; to identify security threats to candidates of both political parties; to document ISIS and Russian war crime propaganda, and to test the value of educational technologies. Some of us cosponsor the bipartisan Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (S.1876), which, among other things, would require platforms to offer a tool similar to CrowdTangle in recognition of the value that this kind of transparency provides.
In announcing it will end CrowdTangle access on August 14, Meta has pointed to its recently created Meta Content Library as an available alternative that it says “provide[s] the most comprehensive access to publicly- available content across Facebook and Instagram of any research tool we have built to date.” We recognize that Meta Content Library does in some important ways provide greater data and context than was available through CrowdTangle (including information on the reach of content and the ability to study comments), and we welcome and appreciate Meta’s willingness to improve upon what it makes available in these directions.
At the same time, we are deeply concerned that Meta Content Library also has significant limitations that make it an inadequate replacement for CrowdTangle at the current time. Most notable is that, while CrowdTangle retains historical time-series data about posts that allows for reproducible searches and seeing trends over time, Meta Content Library currently only provides a view of the platform as it exists at the moment that a search is run. This makes it difficult if not impossible for a researcher to reproduce a search conducted by another and also significantly limits and complicates the ability of researchers to study what occurred on the platform retroactively prior to, and after, the development of the research question. More generally, researchers have raised concern that Meta Content Library has more restrictive data retention policies and export rules, more limited interfaces, fewer tools for researcher collaboration, fewer insight capacities, and less accessibility to those without data science backgrounds. One analysis cited different dimensions in which Meta Content Library has fewer features than CrowdTangle for research.
There are also questions of how many organizations will have access to and the practical ability to use Meta Content Library if CrowdTangle access is ended. Meta has further restricted the ability to access Meta Content Library compared with the types of individuals and organizations who have had access to CrowdTangle, and eligible researchers report a months, if not years, long process to obtain access to Meta Content Library and to develop the necessary integrations with a new tool suite, particularly as the functionality continues to be updated. Meta has to date not provided information about how many organizations have access to Meta Content Library compared to those with access to CrowdTangle, or how many have proven able actually to use it effectively.
These usability and access concerns raise significant questions as to why Meta is pulling the plug on this tool at such a critical time. We thus ask you to respond in writing to the following in advance of any end of CrowdTangle access and no later than August 12, 2024:
- Will Meta delay the end of CrowdTangle access by at least six months while it continues to develop functionality and access to Meta Content Library? If not, why not?
- Will Meta commit to ensuring that Meta Content Library retains at least the functionality available in CrowdTangle (including to allow for reproducible historical research with time-series data)? If not, why not?
- Please provide more information about, and the raw numbers of, US-based organizations who now have access to Meta Content Library compared to those with access to CrowdTangle, and provide information about how many are in the application process.
- Will Meta add functionality to ensure that Meta Content Library indicates whether content is AI- generated or fact-checked as false/misleading? If not, why not?
- Please provide information about Meta’s efforts to ensure independent researchers and journalists can
study content as to the following topics:
- Misleading election information;
- Coordinated foreign influence campaigns;
- Mental health; and
- Proliferation of generative AI.
Thank you for your attention to these issues. We look forward to your response.
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