The law that could lay bare ad targeting

A new law would force Big Tech to share ad data

Since the chaos of the 2016 election, Facebook has done a lot to increase transparency around the ads that run on its platform. The one thing it still refuses to share? Data on who those ads target. But a new bill introduced by House Democrats on Thursday could change that, as my colleague Ben Brody and I wrote.

This is the Social Media DATA Act, introduced by Reps. Lori Trahan and Kathy Castor, and it would force large platforms like Facebook and Google to give researchers and the Federal Trade Commission access to more detailed ad libraries. Those libraries would include, among other things, a description of the audience that was targeted, information about how many people interacted with the ad and details about whether the ad was optimized for awareness, traffic or some other purpose.

• Researchers say ad targeting data is crucial to understanding advertisers' intent. A housing ad may seem innocuous — until you realize its target audience excludes Black viewers, or users in a ZIP code where most residents are Black.
• But right now, even on Facebook — which has the most robust ad archive of any platform — the only way to see a given ad's targeting data is if you've been served the ads yourself.
• Facebook argues the policy protects users from bad actors who might try to reverse-engineer those users' interests by collecting targeting data en masse. But the policy also means the growing number of researchers interested in studying digital advertising have to build workarounds — often without Facebook's consent.

I wrote recently about Facebook's battleswith researchers at New York University, who built a browser extension to scrape ads users see while browsing Facebook. The researchers then publish the targeting data they collect in a public database. Facebook tried to shut that work down, citing its policies against web scraping. The Social Media DATA Act potentially could resolve those issues by giving researchers affiliated with academic institutions access to that targeting data they need.

The law would apply to big platforms with 100 million monthly active users or more, and the databases would include ads from anyone who spends more than $500 on the platform in a given year.

• The bill would also establish a working group within the Federal Trade Commission that would develop a set of best practices around social media research. The group would help address the risks, often cited by social platforms, that even academics sometimes abuse user data, as was the case in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

For obvious reasons, tech companies are bound to resist this kind of forced disclosure. Yes, there are possible privacy concerns. But more than that, this law would make platforms vulnerable by forcing them to admit how effective — or ineffective — their ads really are.

— Issie Lapowsky (email | twitter)

A message from Amazon

It's not just Amazon employees who experience the benefit of increasing their starting wage to at least $15 an hour — a recent study from the University of California-Berkeley and Brandeis University found that when Amazon raised wages, the average hourly wage in the surrounding area rose by 4.7%.

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A message from Amazon

Kimberly thinks Amazon is "setting a good example for not only Florida, but every other state where the minimum wage is below $15/hr." That's because she has seen the difference $15/hr has made for her, her family, and her community.

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