How an NYU Tandon team reveals Facebook political ad spending
When Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, heard from a friend that Facebook was about to publicize all its political-ad data, he was intrigued. With Facebook under increasing scrutiny for its role in reaching voters through targeted-ad campaigns, the move toward heightened transparency was unprecedented in the social-media industry.
“Everyone knows what happened in the election and the allegations against the Russians,” McCoy told The Bridge. “Obviously, Facebook was trying to react to them.”
Yet finding the searchable database Facebook built to display the information, which went live on May 24, required a strenuous search on McCoy’s part. And once he discovered the database, McCoy found it frustratingly minimalist for research purposes, not offering many options for compiling statistics.