Editor’s note: This article has been updated with comments from Facebook and from an executive at the Charles Koch Foundation.
A partnership between Facebook and several foundations to study the effects of social media on democracy has been terminated because the scholars weren’t satisfied with the data Facebook provided, according to John Arnold, one of the participating philanthropists.
In a series of tweets, Arnold wrote that “little could be learned because of the data made available.”
Housed at the Social Science Research Council, 83 participating researchers were promised access to Facebook’s proprietary data to see how social media can sow distrust and spread disinformation. The project was supported by several philanthropies: The Charles Koch, Children’s Investment Fund, William and Flora Hewlett, John S. and James L. Knight, Laura and John Arnold, and Alfred P. Sloan foundations and the Omidyar Network. (The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)
This summer the consortium of grant makers shared their concerns with the research council and suggested pulling the plug on the project if the data issue wasn’t solved by the end of September.
Arnold wrote that the data set Facebook promised at the outset of the project was to be unprecedented in size and depth, but what was ultimately provided “was not adequate to answer most questions researchers had proposed.”
Although Arnold said the project had been scuttled, Facebook said it already had provided more than 32 million links, making it one of the largest private data sets ever created for academic research on the effects of social media on democracy. The company said it has not walked away from the effort. When it encountered challenges providing private data securely for the effort, the company says it developed technology and data-sharing policies to provide privacy protection.
Facebook said it will continue the project without the foundation’s participation.
“No organization has invested more in this effort than Facebook, and we are committed to continiuing to provide access to data for independent academic research while ensuring that we also protect people’s privacy,” wrote a Facebook spokeswoman in an email.
Lack of Access
The data researchers were seeking were Facebook URL shares. They wanted access to website addresses if they had been shared by at least 20 unique Facebook accounts and shared publicly at least once. Researchers had expected the data set to include 2 million unique URLs shared in 300 million posts per week.
Members of the donor collaborative knew that the project came with risk, but Arnold thought that Facebook had “done its homework” before the launch and could provide the data sought by the researchers. While he isn’t convinced Facebook acted in bad faith, “it is hard to look back on this without at least some degree of cynicism,” Arnold wrote.
Jesse Blumenthal, director of technology and innovation at the Charles Koch Institute, said he is confident that Facebook, the participating donors, and researchers all acted in good faith.
Not only was providing the data a technological challenge, supplying researchers in different countries, each with its own privacy and data security regulations, made the project complex from a legal standpoint, he said.
Blumenthal hopes the experience will provide lessons for future academic partnerships with technology companies. But he warned that prescriptive privacy rules, and fear of lawsuits, could scare corporations away from participating.
“A push to maximize privacy regulations has trade-offs,” he said.
In a message posted on its website last week, the Hewlett Foundation confirmed that the project would wind down by the end of the year.
The foundation said it anticipates that most of the scholars previous awarded grants would still receive support despite the termination of the consortium’s support.
“We still have a long way to go before the public has credible, trustworthy answers to the hardest questions about social media’s role in digital disinformation.” the statement said.
Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. He recently wrote about a $100 million grant from the Lego Foundation for play-based educational programs; the distribution of $1 billion to four research institutions ; and grant making that gives grantees more power in decision-making . Email Alex or follow him on Twitter .
