Campaigners urge Facebook to restore ad monitoring access

Facebook has agreed to share more information about political advertising on its platform. Facebook will open its advertising API — or integration “hook” that third parties can use to plug into its system — in “late March.” The move came after more than 30 non-profit campaigners, academics and press freedom outfits called on Facebook to “cease harassment of good faith researchers who are building tools to provide greater transparency into the advertising on your platform.” They said, “By restricting access to advertising transparency tools available to Facebook users, you are undermining transparency, eliminating the choice of your users to install tools that help them analyse political ads, and wielding control over good faith researchers who try to review data on the platform.”