The new effort, which has yet to propose its first research project, is the most open approach Facebook’s taken yet. “We hope that will be a model that replicates not just within Facebook but across the industry,” Facebook’s Ginsberg said. “It’s a way to make data available for social science research in a way that means that it’s both independent and maintains privacy.” But the new approach will also face an uphill battle to prove its credibility. The new Facebook research project came together under the company’s public relations and policy team, not its research group of PhDs trained in ethics and research design. More than 200 scholars from the Association of Internet Researchers, a global group of interdisciplinary academics, have signed a letter saying the effort is too limited in the questions it’s asking, and also that it risks replicating what sociologists call the “Matthew effect,” where only scholars from elite universities—like Harvard and Stanford—get an inside track.
“Facebook’s new initiative is set up in such a way that it will select projects that address known problems in an area known to be problematic,” the academics wrote. The research effort, the letter said, also won’t let the world—or Facebook, for that matter—get ahead of the next big problem.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.