https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/31/facebook-has-good-reasons-for-blocking-research-into-political-ad-targeting

New York University research into who sees the messages is laudable but its collection of personal data isn’t

It looked like another classic Facebook scandal: a report in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Facebook Seeks Shutdown of NYU Research Project Into Political Ad Targeting”. The story was that Facebook was “demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices, setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission. The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.”