Facebook is a newstand. But no one can see which news Facebook is pushing to the top.
So we built an app for that called #CitizenBrowser. Our first finding: the sharp impact of Facebook’s political ad ban reversal in the Georgia Senate elections.
https://t.co/GZNdwZOlHW /1
This is the first report from our #CitizenBrowser project. There will be many more to come. But first, I want to tell you a bit about how we did it because it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done @themarkup – and we do a lot of ambitious projects. /2
#CitizenBrowser grew out of conversations @suryamattu and I had about how to audit Facebook. We had both worked on browser extensions to collect data from Facebook, but FB always threatened to shut those down, just like their recent threats against the NYU AdObservatory. /3
But the bigger problem is that browser extensions don’t capture most FB activity. Most people use FB on mobile and browser extensions only work on desktop or laptop computers.
So one night, late at the WeWork, @suryamattu said to me: “We’ll have to build our own browser.” /4
“No way,” I said. “That’s insane.” But slowly, I came around. Here’s why: browsers are good at running in the background. Users could log into FB once through the browser and never use it again.
Then we wouldn’t be monitoring users. We would only be monitoring their feed. /5