Why is Mozilla refuting Facebook's claim that ``collecting data for research purposes is jeopardizing user privacy''?

Since advertisements displayed on Facebook influence user's decision-making and sometimes have a great influence on politics and society, a research team at New York University used a tool called `` Ad Observer '' to collect advertisement information from Facebook. , 'Who is seeing what kind of advertisement?' However, on August 3, 2021, Facebook disabled the researcher's account, citing that user privacy was at risk in this study. In response, Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, has published an article titled 'Why Facebook's claim about Ad Observer is wrong.'

Why Facebook's claims about the Ad Observer are wrong
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/why-facebooks-claims-about-the-ad-observer-are-wrong/

There is a lot of false information and misinformation on Facebook, and it has been pointed out that it promotes riots and discrimination, and it has been pointed out that it was used politically in the 2016 presidential election.

It turned out that the Trump camp was conducting an advertising campaign so that black people would not vote in the 2016 presidential election - GIGAZINE

However, Facebook has not released information on 'who is displaying what kind of advertisement' so far. Therefore, in 2020, a research team at New York University created a tool called 'Ad Observer' as a Chrome extension and Firefox add-on. The browser with Ad Observer installed is designed to send the advertising information displayed on Facebook to the research team, and we tried to analyze the advertising information on Facebook by asking volunteers to cooperate.

Ad Observers
https://adobserver.org/

However, on August 3, 2021, Facebook announced that the project had disabled Facebook accounts related to the research team, saying that the project was ``accessing Facebook data in an unauthorized way.'' Facebook claims that Ad Observer evaded detection and collected data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles, and why certain ads were displayed.

Facebook decides to disable university research account, violates terms of service and endangers user privacy - GIGAZINE

by Shop Catalog

In response, Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, published an article titled 'Why Facebook's claim about Ad Observer is wrong.'

Mozilla recommends that users use Ad Observer, but before making the recommendation, they conducted a code review and checked the flow of ``whether the user understands and agrees with the content''. About. Mozilla evaluated Ad Observer based on these three points. Mozilla said that when feedback was sent to the Ad Observer research team, the research team immediately changed the code to protect user privacy.

According to Mozilla, Ad Observer collects ads, targeting parameters, and metadata related to ads, but does not collect user posts or friend information, and does not compile user profiles on its servers. not. Ad Observer also turns off the collection of user attribute information by default, allowing users to check the collected data from the 'My Archive' tab and opt-in for what is acceptable to collect. Also, since Ad Observer is open source and the code is published on GitHub , anyone can check the above content.

Taken together, Mozilla concludes, ``Ad Observer users can participate in this important research without sacrificing privacy.''

Mozilla said Facebook needs to crack down on third parties that collect data on its platform and put users at risk, but applying that policy to Ad Observer is counterproductive.

On the other hand, in the online community Hacker News, ``Both organizations' posts are correct, but it is worth noting that the meaning of the words is different. Facebook defines advertisers as 'users,' and Mozilla's The post considers advertisers to be customers, not users, and speaks to other users.'

Facebook's claims about the Ad Observer are wrong | Hacker News