The bill will force social media companies to share their data with outside researchers who request it.
With their millions if not billions of users, social media platforms have absolutely colossal amounts of all kinds of data about their users. Data with which they can do almost anything they want, including selling it to advertisers. The score may make it easier to obtain them in the context of the study.
The bill would force social media companies
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram contain tons of data about us, it’s no secret. Some of this data is provided directly by users when they like or dislike the posts they interact with, the people and accounts they follow, etc. This collects a lot of data that we don’t necessarily suspect.
share your data with third party researchers who request it
For years, researchers have tried to evaluate and study the data collected by these platforms, but some of them make the task more difficult. So much so that today a new bill backed by Senators Klobuchar (D-MN), Coons (D-DE) and Portman (R-OH) requires social media companies to be required to share this data with third parties. party investigators, if they so require.
The reason for this proposed law is that, as stated above, social media platforms have made it very difficult to obtain this data under circumstances that could be qualified as normal. There have been several reports in the past where Meta, which owns Facebook, provided incomplete datasets. Not too long ago, Facebook reportedly even suspended the accounts of New York University researchers who tried to investigate false information and political ads on the social network.
It’s unclear if and when this bill will pass, but it’s now clear that some lawmakers think it’s time for social media companies to stop making their own rules.