Researchers struggle to access Facebook data

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Researchers struggle to access Facebook data

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, December 7th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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There’s a rally in the UK and EU markets for carbon allowances. Germany’s new coalition government has ambitious climate goals. Plus, academics want more data to find out further about the social harms that Facebook may be causing, but Facebook won’t always cough it up.

Madhumita Murgia
And as one academic said to me, the most shocking thing that came out of Frances Haugen’s revelations were how much Facebook is able to hide.

Marc Filippino
We’ll talk about this with the FT’s European technology correspondent Madhumita Murgia. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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Carbon allowances traded on UK and EU markets were near a record high of more than £75 per tonne last week. The rally is due in part to the renewed focus on emissions after the big UN climate summit in Glasgow. The global energy crunch is also pushing up prices. Europe’s gas shortage is prompting some energy producers to switch to coal so they need to buy more allowances to offset the extra emissions they’re creating. Prices have become so high a mechanism has kicked in requiring UK lawmakers to decide whether they should intervene. The government says it will make that decision by next Tuesday.

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Tomorrow, Germany’s parliament is expected to elect Olaf Scholz as the country’s next chancellor. He’ll lead a coalition that will take over after Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign. The country’s political parties spent nearly two months hammering out an agreement on how they’ll govern together. We asked our Berlin bureau chief Guy Chazan, what might change in terms of economic policy.

Guy Chazan
The main difference is that this new government will be a lot more ambitious when it comes to climate targets. For example, Germany had decided to phase out all its coal power by 2038, but this government wants to do it, ideally by 2030. It’s also saying it wants to get all petrol and diesel cars off the roads in the 2030s and replace them with electric vehicles. It has extremely ambitious targets for expanding renewables. In terms of broader economic policy, you won’t see any enormous changes. I mean, for example, the SPD and that part of the Greens did want to increase taxes on higher earners. They wanted to introduce all kinds of new taxes, but they were blocked from doing that by the third partner in the coalition of the FDP, that’s the sort of liberal party, which is quite hawkish in terms of fiscal policy. And they basically said that they would not enter any government that was going to raise taxes. So some of the ambitions of the more leftwing parties to change and reform Germany’s tax system basically came to nought.

Marc Filippino
That’s the FT’s Berlin bureau chief Guy Chazan.

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A group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar filed a lawsuit against Facebook yesterday in US court. They’re accusing the social media company of failing to act against anti-Rohingya hate speech on Facebook that ended up fuelling real violence in the region. This lawsuit comes as Facebook is already facing a torrent of criticism about the harm its sites may be causing, ranging from violence to teen anxiety. Revelations by whistleblower Frances Haugen showed how much Facebook knows about these harms and academics are trying to find out more. But our European technology correspondent Madhumita Murgia has found that researchers are struggling to access the data they need. She joins me now to talk more. Hi, Madhu.

Madhumita Murgia
Hi, hi there.

Marc Filippino
So Madhu, how did you come across this story?

Madhumita Murgia
Yeah. So I had been reporting around, you know, Frances Haugen’s revelations, and in the course of that had spoken to a few different researchers, both academic, which means, you know, sort of university affiliated as well as researchers who are part of civil society groups, you know, people advocacy groups like AlgorithmWatch or Global Witness. And in a lot of cases, the things that came up again and again was these independent researchers felt that independent and, you know, civil society affiliated researchers felt that they just didn’t have the access and the transparency to be able to conduct any real research and to gain any deep understanding of actually what was going on on the Facebook platform. And so what it meant was that everybody was sort of beholden to Facebook to a, do the research and then b, to communicate externally what that research had found. And as one academic said to me, Emma Briant, she said, you know, the most shocking thing that came out of Frances Haugen’s revelations were how much Facebook is able to hide.

Marc Filippino
And you know, this brings up a question of whether researchers or academics actually have a right to this data. You know, Facebook is a private company, do they have to release this? What’s the relationship they have with researchers?

Madhumita Murgia
Yeah. You know, you’re right. It’s complicated. It is a private platform, and there is no current regulation that would require them to do this. But it really comes down to social responsibility and I think for a long time now since the 2016 election, since the revelations from Cambridge Analytica, which was, you know, this controversy where a political consultancy was able to access the Facebook data of millions of users, these controversies have shown that there are harms being facilitated, if not sort of perpetrated by how content moves around on Facebook’s platforms. And because it’s such a huge scale at which this happens, you know, billions of people are touched by these algorithms. Billions of people are using Facebook and Instagram. It becomes a matter of public health, really. And this becomes a question that sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, all types of researchers want to answer these questions and understand more.

Marc Filippino
Now, has Facebook acknowledged the problem and has it responded to the complaints by researchers?

Madhumita Murgia
Yeah. So I think Facebook, having spoken to them, do accept that they need to have academic research being done in the space of misinformation, for example, political manipulation. They fund research in these areas. They haven’t been sort of resisting it openly. And so yes, they do provide certain levels of access. They have an API that they’ve just released, which means it’s a way for researchers to plug in and access certain types of data. So they have been trying to do this, but the allegations really have been they still control a lot of the process and make it really difficult for for academics to answer the questions they want. So it’s just basically them deciding what data to provide and then deciding what questions can be answered. And so rather than it being kind of a free flow exchange of ideas, academics feel restricted.

Marc Filippino
Now, to be clear Madhu, right now there’s there’s really nothing anyone can do to force Facebook to hand over data right?

Madhumita Murgia
No, unless there’s a mandated access. And if that access is not given, there’s some sort of consequence, then really nothing will change. But I think it’s much clearer to everybody now that there is a need for independent research. You know, there is regulation now being written both in Europe and being proposed in the US as well to mandate access to researchers.

Marc Filippino
Madhumita Murgia is the FT’s European technology correspondent. Thanks, Madhu.

Madhumita Murgia
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
And before we go, the former head of Nissan has turned into a bit of a back-seat driver. Carlos Ghosn was once one of the most famous CEOs in Japan after he revived the ailing car company. But his fame eventually crumbled, and he ended up escaping Japan in late 2019 in a musical equipment box, fleeing charges of financial misconduct. Now he lives in exile in Lebanon, and he issues tirades over Zoom against Nissan’s management. In a recent one, he called the company’s multibillion-dollar plan to take on Tesla with electric vehicles visionless. But investors may agree, shares have fallen more than 7 per cent since Nissan announced the plan last week.

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You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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