The New York Times has a report out today that could be a storyline from HBO’s hit comedy, “Silicon Valley.” It’s *that* bad:
New (w/ @RMac18 assist): More than three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a plan to share Facebook data with outside researchers, so that academics could study misinformation on the site. But the data set had a major flaw. https://t.co/NSs0ZFfm2q
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) September 10, 2021
According to the NYT, the data Facebook gave researchers was from only 50% of U.S. users, “not 100% of them as the company had described the data set would include”:
The data included the interactions of about 50% of Facebook’s U.S. users, not 100% of them as the company had described the data set would include.
Researchers have been working with this data set for TWO YEARS, getting academic research papers ready. https://t.co/NSs0ZFfm2q
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) September 10, 2021
But this f*** up has major ramifications for the researchers and now there’s some concern that “their doctoral students’ degrees could be at risk”:
It's a bit inside-baseball academia, but a lot of work has been trashed because of this mistake. One researcher expressed concern that their doctoral students' degrees could be at risk. https://t.co/2ejZFEkyia pic.twitter.com/LZebyuWMD5
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) September 10, 2021
The discrepancy was originally discovered by a researcher in Italy:
It's also interesting how this flaw was discovered in the first place. @fabiogiglietto took Facebook's shelved Q1 report on Widely Viewed Content, then compared it to the researchers data set. That's when he found a huge discrepancy. https://t.co/2ejZFEkyia pic.twitter.com/I5SsJ0Sm8U
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) September 10, 2021
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Yeah, good luck with this:
There's a lot of trust that FB needs to win back from researchers, journalists and the wider public. But hopefully they end up understanding that MORE transparency leads to outcomes like this where they can make the data they share better and more accurate https://t.co/2ejZFEkyia
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) September 10, 2021
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