Urgent: Meta Stuns Users by Shutting Down Vital Misinformation Tracking Tool CrowdTangle | Tech News
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has officially shut down CrowdTangle, a tool extensively utilized by researchers, watchdog organizations, and journalists for monitoring social media posts and tracking the spread of misinformation. Meta had announced this closure earlier in the year, and it took effect on Wednesday.
The decision has been met with significant backlash. In May, several groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch, and NYU’s Center for Social Media & Politics, urged Meta to keep CrowdTangle operational at least through the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. These organizations argued that terminating CrowdTangle compromises crucial pre- and post-election oversight and diminishes Meta’s transparency during a critical period marked by fragile social trust and digital democracy.
Additionally, the Mozilla Foundation echoed these concerns in March, requesting Meta to maintain the tool’s functionality until January. This request was supported by numerous groups and individual academic researchers. Mozilla stressed that CrowdTangle had set an industry standard for real-time platform transparency and was vital in understanding and combating disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression on Facebook.
Meta has introduced the Meta Content Library as an alternative to CrowdTangle. However, this new tool is currently restricted to academic researchers and nonprofits, leaving most news organizations without access. Critics have also pointed out that the Meta Content Library has not yet matched CrowdTangle’s effectiveness.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, stated in a recent blog post that the company is collecting feedback from hundreds of researchers to improve the Meta Content Library and make it more user-friendly.
Meta acquired CrowdTangle in 2016.
Original Story https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/meta-ignores-pleas-kills-off-misinformation-tracking-tool-crowdtangle-124081500064_1.html
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