Meta Content Library and API - Transparency for Social Media Platforms

Friday - November 24 2023, 08:56 UTC - 1 year ago

Meta is releasing a new transparency product, the Meta Content Library and API, that allows select researchers to access publicly available data on Facebook and Instagram. This new library is a step toward increased visibility about what is happening on its platforms and the effect that Meta’s products have on online conversations, politics, and society at large. Access to this data is limited to approved researchers, and access is provided through a virtual "clean room" to protect user privacy.

Meta is releasing a new transparency product called the Meta Content Library and API, according to an announcement from the company today. The new tools will allow select researchers to access publicly available data on Facebook and Instagram in an effort to give a more overarching view of what's happening on the platforms.

The move comes as social media companies are facing public and regulatory pressure to increase transparency about how their products—specifically recommendation algorithms—work and what impact they have. Academic researchers have long been calling for better access to data from social media platforms, including Meta. This new library is a step toward increased visibility about what is happening on its platforms and the effect that Meta’s products have on online conversations, politics, and society at large.

In an interview, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the tools "are really quite important" in that they provide, in a lot of ways, "the most comprehensive access to publicly available content across Facebook and Instagram of anything that we’ve built to date." The Content Library will also help the company meet new regulatory requirements and obligations on data sharing and transparency, as the company notes in a blog post Tuesday.Meta says that to protect user privacy, this data will be accessible only through a virtual "clean room" and not downloadable. And access will be limited to approved researchers, who will be required to apply via an independent third-party organization.

Hopes for "meaningful" research .

Researchers have had a fraught relationship with social media companies in the past, particularly when it comes to accessing data that platforms might not want public. (In 2021, for instance, Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers at New York University’s Transparency Project, which was investigating political ad targeting on the platform through web scraping, which the company said violated user privacy.) .

Clegg said he wants the product to enable research that, first and foremost, is "meaningful," and he highlighted the current lack of consensus among researchers about the exact impacts of social media—research that has undoubtedly been made more difficult by the lack of public data from social media companies.

The new library is primarily a database that can be accessed either through a web interface similar to a search engine or through an API where researchers can code their own queries to return large amounts of data. Researchers could, for example, ask to see all public posts in English about generative AI on February 14, 2023, sorted by most viewed to least viewed.

Recent moves by regulators, particularly in the European Union, may have pushed Meta’s hand with mandates for greater transparency. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect in August, requires that big platforms the size of Meta provide access to real-time data for researchers investigating "the detection, identification, and understanding of systemic risks in the Union." Other regulatory efforts in Australia, Brazil, the US, and elsewhere have attempte to grapple with the power of platforms and the use of data.