Security News > 2022 > May > Facebook opens political ad data vaults to researchers

Meta's ad transparency tools will soon reveal another treasure trove of data: advertiser targeting choices for political, election-related, and social issue spots.

Meta said it plans to add the targeting data into its Facebook Open Research and Transparency environment for academic researchers at the end of May. The move comes a day after Meta's reputation as a bad data custodian resurfaced with news of a lawsuit filed in Washington DC against CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Jeff King, Meta's VP of business integrity, said that FORT would allow researchers to look at detailed targeting information for social issue, electoral and political ads.

The non-academic public has to wait until July to get their hands on that data in Facebook's Ad Library, and when released it will be in a summarized form.

Included in the update will be data on total number of social, electoral, and political ads ran on a page using particular targeting data, percentage spent on the different issues, and whether the page uses a custom or lookalike audience.

Meta, in particular, was caught last year kicking transparency researchers from New York University's Ad Observatory Project off its platforms - not the first time it's done something similar.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/05/24/facebook_political_ad_targeting_data/