Mark Zuckerberg-owned social media giant Meta has shut down CrowdTangle, a researching tool used to monitor social media posts that include alleged misinformation.
The move has upset a series of nonprofits which sent letters in protest of Meta's move to a new tool called Content Library. Their issue stems from Meta limiting usage of Content Library to "qualified academic or nonprofit institutions who are pursuing scientific or public interest research."
This has prevented many journalists from having immediate access to the new tool, TechCrunch reported.
The letter to Meta in May 2024 asked for CrowdTangle to stay available until at least January 2025 so that it could be used through the 2024 presidential election.
"This decision jeopardizes essential pre- and post-election oversight mechanisms and undermines Meta's transparency efforts during this critical period, and at a time when social trust and digital democracy are alarmingly fragile," the letter, which was posted to the Human Rights Watch website, stated.
"This obstruction poses a severe risk to the efforts of civil rights groups, activists, journalists, and election officials to identify and mitigate political misinformation, incitements of violence, and the online targeting of vulnerable communities."
The letter was signed by nearly 50 organizations, including Media Matters for America, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and the Center for American Progress.
The Mozilla Foundation, which operates the popular web browser Firefox, penned its own letter also criticizing Meta for a lack of transparency.
"For years, CrowdTangle has represented an industry best practice for real-time platform transparency. It has become a lifeline for understanding how disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression spread on Facebook, undermining civic discourse and democracy," the company wrote.
Mozilla also hoped that Meta would continue to operate until at least after the 2024 election cycle.
Despite the outcry, the Meta Content Library seems mostly similar in its allowing to search for keywords in public posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Other features were talked about in a recent Meta blog.
At an MIT Technology conference in May 2024, Meta's president of global affairs was asked why the company wouldn't wait until at least 2025 to transition away from CrowdTangle.
"It only measures a narrow cake slice of a cake slice, which is particular forms of engagement," said Nick Clegg. "It literally doesn’t tell you what people are seeing online."
Clegg vehemently defended the decision and said he took it personally that journalists and researchers didn't understand why the change was being made. He even advocated for the tool to be removed sooner than it was.
Return managing editor Peter Gietl said that this move might signal a growing desire from Zuckerberg and Meta to move away from political content.
"We've seen in interviews and recent reports that Zuckerberg is shying away from making big splashes in politics during the 2024 election cycle," Gietl noted. "We see him at UFC events, jiu jitsu tournaments, and praising Donald Trump for being bad ass. It seems the company may be making a shift to focus on their technologies, like augmented reality, rather then trying to appease political activists."
According to the Washington Post, political donations have indeed dried up from Zuckerberg-led sources.
At $2.5 million, political grants and awards connected to Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are less than 1% of what was spent in 2020, which was around $332 million.
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