Meta shuts down news monitoring tool, CrownTangle, ahead of US elections

CrowdTangle, a digital tool considered vital in tracking viral falsehoods, will be shut down by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, in a major election year.

Meta has stated that CrowdTangle will be unavailable after August 14, which is less than three months before the US election.

CrowdTangle has been a game-changer, offering researchers and journalists crucial real-time transparency into the spread of conspiracy theories and hate speech on influential Meta-owned platforms.

Researchers fear this move will disrupt efforts to detect what would undoubtedly be widespread misinformation.

The tech giant has revealed plans to replace it with a new tool, but researchers claim it lacks the same functionality, and news organizations will largely not have access to it.

“In a year where almost half of the global population is expected to vote in elections, cutting off access to CrowdTangle will severely limit independent oversight of harms.

“It represents a grave step backwards for social media platform transparency,” Melanie Smith, Director of research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told AFP.

CrowdTangle’s replacement is reportedly still under development.

It’s a tool that some in the tech industry, including Brandon Silverman, former CrowdTangle chief executive, expects not to be as effective, especially in elections likely to see a proliferation of AI-enabled falsehoods.

“It’s an entirely new muscle” that Meta is yet to build to protect the integrity of elections, Silverman told AFP, calling for “openness and transparency.”

In recent election cycles, researchers say CrowdTangle alerted them to harmful activities including foreign interference, online harassment and incitements to violence.

By its own admission, Meta — which bought CrowdTangle in 2016 –- said that in the 2019 elections in Louisiana, the tool helped state officials identify misinformation, such as inaccurate poll hours that had been posted online.

In the 2020 presidential vote, the company offered the tool to US election officials across all states to help them “quickly identify misinformation, voter interference and suppression.”

The tool also made dashboards available to the public to track what major candidates were posting on their official and campaign pages.

Lamenting the risk of losing these functions forever, global nonprofit Mozilla Foundation demanded in an open letter to Meta that CrowdTangle be retained at least until January 2025.

“Abandoning CrowdTangle while the Content Library lacks so much of CrowdTangle’s core functionality undermines the fundamental principle of transparency,” said the letter signed by dozens of tech watchdogs and researchers.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the letter’s claims are “just wrong,” insisting the Content Library will contain “more comprehensive data than CrowdTangle” and be made available to academics and non-profit election integrity experts.

Meta, which has been moving away from news across its platforms, will not make the new tool accessible to for-profit media.

Journalists have used CrowdTangle in the past to investigate public health crises as well as human rights abuses and natural disasters.

Meta’s decision to cut off journalists comes after many used CrowdTangle to report unflattering stories, including its flailing moderation efforts and how its gaming app was overrun with pirated content.

CrowdTangle has been a crucial source of data that helped “hold Meta accountable for enforcing its policies,” Tim Harper, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology, told AFP.

Organizations that debunk misinformation as part of Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, including AFP, will have access to the Content Library.

But other researchers and nonprofits will have to apply for access or look for expensive alternatives. Two researchers told AFP under condition of anonymity that in one-on-one meetings with Meta officials, they demanded firm commitments from company officials.

“While most fact-checkers already working with Meta will have access to the new tool, it’s not super clear if many independent researchers –- already worried about losing CrowdTangle’s functionality — will,” Carlos Hernandez-Echevarria, head of the Spanish nonprofit Maldita, told AFP.

“It has generated a lot of concerns.”

AFP