With millions of users Facebook has a fundamental obligation to promote transparency, fairness, and combat misinformation like climate and election denial. But Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads — has proposed shutting down a key transparency tool called CrowdTangle just weeks before the 2024 election!
Meta has a history of failing to shut down climate denial and fascist rhetoric. In the past they’ve allowed misinformation to run rampant, reaching millions of people before action has been taken. For example, we’ve told you before about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exploited the Facebook data of almost 100 million people to help Donald Trump and other fossil fueled fascists win the 2016 election. Independent verification of information and audience tools like CrowdTangle are the only way for Meta to demonstrate trustworthiness.
For those of you who don’t remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal, here’s the gist: which exploited the Facebook data of almost 100 million people to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election – as well as influencing the Brexit vote in the UK and other conservative anti-democratic and pro-fossil-fuel goals.
The scheme to illegally manipulate elections was discovered using a tool called CrowdTangle, which was developed independently from Facebook, and gave journalists and researchers a view of what was actually being shared on the platform. Back during the Trump administration, CrowdTangle was used to connect Cambridge Analytica to the Mercer family – a fossil fueled dynasty with a history of shady exploits: The Mercer Family Foundation spent millions propping up Breitbart.com and their leader Steve Bannon. They’ve supported dozens of climate-denying politicians from Ted Cruz to Roy Moore. And they routinely fund so-called think-tanks like the Heartland Institute, the CO2 Coalition, and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide that routinely promote junk science denying that climate change is real, urgent, and a danger to our communities,
Now Facebook says they’re going to get rid of CrowdTangle on August 14th. 2024 – just twelve weeks before one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. As people like Donald Trump and his allies espouse constant streams of fake news and conspiratorial threats, we need platforms like CrowdTangle more than ever. Take a moment to write to Meta’s executives and demand they remain transparent!